The early part of the summer saw us involved with the Kintyre Way Ultra again, this time from Tayinloan to Campbeltown. Long-standing friends, Neil & Dorothy, marshalled for the first time and it took Neil a few days to “marshal” his thoughts after their baptism of fire! The finish was in Springbank Distillery where Suse took to opportunity to get “Lauried”. We were also grateful to sweepers, Emily and Richard who earned his missing coaster and now has the full set.
After a period of declining health, John’s sister, Hilda, died so a quick trip to Morecambe was needed. Needless to say, it rained but on the plus side it was nice to catch up with people and Suse did very well in her choice of hotel.
On the way home from the funeral, we called into the Banksy exhibition in GOMA in Glasgow. Generally, we were OK with it but perhaps the sentiments expressed in the exhibition clashed with the marketing and general media hype? Suse was happy because she got to do her own bit of “tagging”.
July saw Suse attending her usual week in Stirling at Tai Chi Caledonia, then racing to source and proof read material for the Tai Chi Union magazine in time for publication in August. Meanwhile, back at Larick House, the owl-cam had been set up and we were lucky enough to get some pictures of what was going on. Unlike the last time they visited, we didn’t see quite so much of them and to be honest we weren’t entirely certain when they left.
In August, we teamed up with The Birches in Findhorn to attend the Scottish 5 days. The event suffered from decisions made by the organisers about access to the events for camper vans but on the whole it was worthwhile, giving The Birches a proper try out of their new camper van and us some quality time with their dog Ralph. The main thing that happened for us was that we were more exposed to fully electric vans and camper vans and the seeds of change were obviously planted.
Having failed in our discussions earlier in the summer to convince the Energy Saving Trust that we were suitable candidates for a heat pump grant, we decided to push on with a new battery linked to our solar panels which did exceptionally well this summer). In itself, this appears to have been a sensible move but the change of energy suppliers which it triggered, exposed problems with our smart meter which, because of where we live, can’t be solved. Octopus, our new energy supplier, didn’t earn many brownie points in the way they handled things and we are still waiting for them to find an engineer who can be encouraged to come to Kintyre and install a dual rate meter that will give us access to cheaper overnight electricity.
Despite these shortcomings, when thinking about the forthcoming car and van MOT’s, we decided to take the plunge and explore the availability of an electric van. It came as a bit of a shock when misgivings about changing technologies, lack of range and poor charging infrastructure were quietly put aside and we quite quickly did a deal for a Toyota Proace. More about this later.
Our first trip in the new van was to the Grayson Perry exhibition in Edinburgh, which we both agreed was outstanding.