This week has been a bit of a write off, I picked up a virus, which one I do not know but there are lots on the go so I guess with our recent visit to the East Coast, staying with the Grandchildren, swimming in our polluted seas, who knows its not a surprise.

BUT, I have now time to do a blog!!! Actually to-day I am feeling better but I dare not risk the wrath of Lorraine if I decide to attend the Scottish Gamekeepers Association AGM in Perth tomorrow. I was looking forward to it and I hear there is a full turn out, which is encouraging to hear. There is disquiet in the Rural World just now, there is much on Social Media about National Parks, Farmers and in my case the war on Scotlands Iconic Red Deer. I fight their corner and try to get some sense into the debate. More later.

In the meantime, what has been doing. Plenty is the short answer. Grant and Stacey are settling in well and I am exhausted seeing the work Grant is doing, I remember well the early energy I had on Rona when I first came aged 46, happy days. I am just going to try and find an early picture:

So I have just spent an hour looking at early photos, 2005 I got a digital camera it seems. I can see a few blogs with early Rona. Coming Soon!!! But even that short time I spentlooking back, it has been a busy 22 years. Back to this year and the last 3 weeks.

Start with a sunset, a bit back to front but hey ho. It signifies a possible trip to Portree and so it was, but later in February the weather, mostly wind and rain has stopped our trips but we have plenty stores so we are pretty much okay.

This time it was just gas and shopping. Normally we like to mazximise the trip but there was nothing pressing to go off, possibly venison and rubbish, or come back although our next flat calm day we could do with getting our concrete mixer back from Dan.

After that it was the last few hinds to reach our cull.

It might be my last season, we will see, but at the moment hopefully Grant will be taking charge. The deer here are in pretty good shape compared to hill deer. But the weather this winter has been very hard on deer generally especially in areas where they do not have the shelter or low ground of Rona. More on that later. I will report on the Deer status on the Deer page soon. After the last hind there was a planned half term holiday in Portsoy with my family and it was good to put the deer to bed for another season and get ready for that long awaited holiday.

e, irst

An overnight in Portree first then the Doctors for check ups, the Lifeboat was fired up but just maintenance, not on a shout. Smokey!! Then off to Portsoy and straight onto the beach. Later in the weekend a forest walk with unbelievable regeneration, no deer at all. Holiday over then up to Braemore to buy carcasses from Wayne to supplement venison orders (a late order we could not supply but our customer was happy to have Wayne’s deer).

Another night in the comfortable Pier Hotel, up early only for Ewen to catch a buoy and rope, just as well I had my wet suit, it wasn’t that cold but maybe that mouthful of Portree harbour water contributed to my sore stomach this week.

Back to Rona and straight into the butchering.

A wee bit of a sunset that night and a promise of better days to come.

And so it was, a fabulous weekend a swim then sickness, so here we are catching up, every cloud and all that.

Although not 100% we decided to have a look at where we would plant the Scots Pine we bought from Ronald Christie at Fochabers, I could not pass Arradoul without going in and good to see a busy yard. The JCB was fired up and I took it off road to see how it would get on knowing it would sink a bit. Sink it did but what I did not expect was a burst pipe. So the digger languished there for a while while we searched for new connections only to find we did not have any. A spare extra long pipe was sourced and we were back on the road, sweating and deciding it was better to go back to being sick.

Tufty our new pet hind has become accustomed to breakfast at the back door, a long way to go to build her up but we will try, I guess she will always be stunted, we will see.