I will not close this period just yet. We will see how my first full Summer on Rona unfolds. April started in usual form with lots of maintenance to catch up on. The Island was in need of attention for sure when I arrived.
I cannot criticise Ray and Mary who were my predecessors, they had little or no guidance from the Factor and his assistants as far as I could see, they tried their best. Sadly when they had left I came across a folder where Ray (previously a chef) had written down projects for the future, lots of good ideas which I believe had fallen on deaf ears. Being left to your own devices was (and became) the norm, where Factors and their like concentrated on making money on projects funded by Government instead of building communities, a common occurrence in the past in Scotland.
There are not many pictures of maintenance in my albums at this time, I guess cutting the grass, painting, strimming, carting guests baggage to the holiday cottages, cleaning cottages, changing bedding, feeding cattle, dosing cattle, tagging calves, planting trees, spreading fertiliser, changing water filters, servicing generators, paperwork, did not allow much time.
I also see in April that I had taken delivery of postcards, had meetings on Skye, worked in one of our Mainland forests, gone down to Kyleakin quarry with tonne bags for 20mm concrete mix, then distributing the Rona brochure myself and others (Hazel Rae) had put together over winter.
My first yacht of the year was Tia Maria, on the 17th of April. The weather was very good and continued through this summer. I spent odd days at the Pier doing a little in preparation for the big push.
But the big event was the first service in Church Cave for many years taken by Reverend Ian Greenshields of Kensaleyre Church of Scotland. Being busy organising logistics as multiple boats were due to arrive, I did not take many pictures, possible that some of these are from visitors.
Here we have Les Tonag and Bruce Taylor who attended. Les had been here working on fencing/planting trees previously , Bruce was my Scottish Woodlands Forester friend and colleague. They were early arrivals.
The bottom two pictures show the view of Church Cave from one of the visiting boats and the calm day as two boats came up the East side of Rona in the Inner Sound of Raasay.
The tide was very low resulting in lots of scrambling over seaweed. Other boats dropped folk on the East side, same scramble. Many were there for a day out which was disappointing. One in particular from Badachro who told me she had not a religious bone in her body and later told me that her neighbours called her the “Bitch From Badachro” Nice!!! More on her later.
This guy was the West Highland Free Press reporter, not a fan of the MOD on Rona or private landowners, I had another interesting discussion with him. An early mobile phone, must have been a signal.
One of the boats was local RIB operator Ally Noble, I think he did two runs, we ended up with quite a ‘congregation’, swelled a bit by the yacht crews in the bay who also came along.
There were 64 people there, one lady fainted, all age groups, some quite elderly, the Brigadoon and fishing vessel Iris were the other two boats used.
It was a good service, no doubt going over many of the attendants heads. The calm day and blue skies made it a special occasion. Rona returned to peace and quiet when they all left at 4.30pm.
Only to waken up next day and find a tour operator with his band of fee paying customers camped in the fields in front of the Lodge, my house. These visitors had been so used to doing what they liked long before ‘The infamous Right to Roam’, that it never occurred to them to ask, can we camp. Without going into too much detail just now, did they consider toileting, water (a precious resource) or just showing plain courtesy. More, much more on 24 years of dealing with this to come but a timely reminder that paradise often disappeared when having to deal with these types.
Finally in April it seems that I had seriously got down to organising the pontoon and gangway construction, delivery and logistics of bringing it all together. I had been doing as much prep’ as I could and now was the big push.
Meanwhile I had cottage guests to deal with from the middle of the month, in the first picture we had University friends and there families, I remember them telling me about how they all met, at Raves. One now a Teacher the other a Magistrate. Good fun folk still being students on Rona!!
The next lot of guests I cannot really remember them apart from the lady on the right, she was disappointed we did not have a waterbed, seemingly they were all the rage.
Onwards to March.