Odd days this week have given us a hint that Spring is on its way. The weather has been off and on but usually grim. Yesterday 18th February was a cracker. But here is the weeks events (or at least some of them).

Storm Otto left us with a we bit of upheaval but nothing of note.

The dinghy was tied down thankfully but it had flipped over, the hen house roof was ripped off, but thankfully no hens in it. Chimney pots seem to be getting a bit of a trial just now. Second one this week.

Lorraine’;s favourite tree got bent more than it was and I see it has splintered at the stump, so I guess it will come down very soon, a shame as we liked the shape of it, I’m sure it must have had honeysuckle (which we have a lot of here) round it as it was growing.

The full out of date milk bottle washed up, 5th Februarey but of course I had to try it, as it was not opened and can report you could have drunk it perfectly fresh (but I didn’t). Amazing, how does it last so long nowadays.

Storm Otto passed, blue skies and calm after it passed. That evening I had a look at the chimney pot, scary on a damp roof. Unfortunately I do not have a spare cover, ones on order though.

What else has been happening? A long overdue Irish drain was put in, at the back of our house. It is to deflect the torrent that comes from the hill behind us in the ever increasing heavy rain, I can report it works well. The 6 tonnes of 20mm sand and gravel mix delivered by the landing craft last month turned out to be 20mm gravel when I went to move it. I did not check it on arrival but what could I do if I did. Not good, I definitely ordered concrete mix but Travis in Fortwilliam got their lines crossed and this is what they sent, one thing I don’t need is stone out here. Very disappointing because what can you do when the landing craft is long gone? You cannot return it and now we are short of mix until the next landing craft

An un-named storm previous to Otto re-aligned both our TV dishes (again).That meant a day of putting them back and connecting our new internet cable awaiting another better day to get the new router installed. Been waiting months for it, roll on a good day. Mind you the view isn’t half bad up there.

Maintenance takes all forms and the horses legacy needs to be dealt with, I rolled out a bale of hay left, thinking the deer might have a go at it but no, they don’t go near it. It was deemed rotten but once the top layer was taken of the hay was perfect, a bit of a waste though. However it enabled me to get up to the barn with the ATV otherwise I’d be in a foot of mud. So again we await the drier days to roll it a bit more and hopefully return it to some semblance of what it was. Horses are not really a good idea here!!!!!! But we all make mistakes.

The metal thingy is the brake caliper off the Club Car, it never worked so I got down to it and it turned out it was quite straightforward. BUT it turns out you need to replace the whole unit at a cost of £107 plus of course Vat. You cannot just fit brake pads. But the most annoying thing with a part like this is that their distribution depot just dreams up a price and they want £35 to ‘post’ it. Robbery.

Back to yesterday it was a good day for a sail so I checked my traps at the Lighthouse and then took a wee tour up the coast looking and counting deer, we had seen some in the morning and the total for the day was 35 plus the ten that are now feeding in the park at the house every night, since the horses left. We will continue to count them then in late March we will spend two consecutive days just doing that. Looking forward to getting the count to plan out our Deer Management Plan.

An added bonus was the sight of 7 cock? Great Northern Divers from the shore. Then only one Female from the boat, correct me if I’m wrong. But nice to see and they were very vocal which is lovely and haunting to hear.

Plenty stags at the South end, but I did see the one antlered stag who seems to disappear every October up at the Lighthouse.

Finally. I think that this picture was from last Sunday when we went to An Tempuil to set up the trail cam. The sea here is often this colour, looked good for a swim. Maybe one day.