A Sustainable House in Kintyre
It’s that time of year again. I think it’s the daffodils that does it. Although winter is gradually letting go its grip and things are starting to warm up, here in Kintyre, we still have a bit to go. Still, the clocks have changed and the evenings are much lighter. We’ve even had a few sunny days!
I guess there really only is one topic to kick off the January post – Storms! Unlike some previous years although it’s been ridiculously wet, we haven’t had the savage gusts that topple trees. Luckily, we haven’t had to go anywhere so it didn’t really matter to us when they were faffing about with the 100 ton boulder at the R & B. Detoured. Who’d be a Roads’ Engineer in Argyll?
I’m not sure what the motivation was but I’ve started running training again. With the help of the Strava app I’ve built up from 3k a day to 5k with some 10 k runs as well. There’s even been a few intervals sessions which brought back a few memories. So far, I haven’t fallen apart and have enjoyed runs at Taynish 5k and Westport Beach 10k. There is even a once a month 5k type Parkrun at Barnluasgan (Beaver Land) courtesy of Jog Scotland.
During the summer, we’d re-visited the idea of fitting a pellet boiler. Ali the Architect was thinking of installing one and had pointed out that the RHI payments were disappearing like “snaw aff a dyke” so we checked out a few companies, most of whom said they couldn’t do anything before the payments dropped and were left with Alva Northern from Glasgow.
In May, we organised the String Course for the Scottish Orienteering Championships near Oban. Having decided to do it, we thought we’d try for something a bit different and ended up with a series of “seaside” illustrations which seemed to go down well. Earlier in the month, we’d helped out again at the Kintyre Way Relay which had good weather for once. What a difference it makes.
We were both somewhat surprised when the pond decided it had better start behaving itself. Literally, overnight it deflated and went back to normal. I shudder to think what had been going on underneath the membrane. Fingers crossed!
Some time ago, when we discovered that the Swiss O Week was returning to Zermatt, we decided to go in the campervan. We had also wondered about going to Yorkshire to sample the Tour but worked out that we could do it in France before the orienteering. So that is what we did. The Lakes 5 Days were taking place at a suitable time for our travels so we included them in the bundle. You can see a version of our itinerary here. All in all, things worked out very well and the van with its new “Co-Pilot” sat-nav system was especially well behaved.
As you might expect, large parts of the month were lost to the World Cup and despite losing England early on, there was plenty to keep me interested. Kevin got very excited at times but this didn’t spread to The Kangaroo who sat on his shelf and generally ignored proceedings.
Most of this month seems to have been spent in the garden so the weather can’t have been too bad. The midges gave me their first “doing” on 14th and there have been plenty of days when conditions allowed them to keep nibbling. I noticed that the mosquito nets brought back from Oz actually let some of the blighters in. Our very old nets with a smaller mesh don’t. Still, like with most things in life, you can usually find ways of adjusting to them.
The main event this month was an impromptu trip to The Gironde for three days of orienteering at Easter. We had to eat some humble pie and fly Ryan Air but I couldn’t see that much difference with Easy Jet and they were competitively priced, on time and took us where we wanted to go. Still couldn’t stop myself from humming the Fascinating Aida song as we left the plane! Continue reading “Cheap Flights, Cheap Flights, Flights for 50p”
