45 Days to go!!!!!

Not that we are counting down, but our exit from Rona is coming closer. I see it was the 8th of August that I last posted. Been busy here.

So here’s a catch up of activities here these last few weeks but only till September 1st, more coming soon.

Steve and the Cowie family from Australia

Steve arrived on the 11th of August with my son and family from Oz, home for a wedding and family visit. So nice to see them.

It was lovely to have them and being a good time for fishing we had a few nights out in the Gap fishing, good to see some good sized Mackerel getting up North, a good sign perhaps.

Life went on when my guests were here and venison production continued with my new assistant
Steve, an able, enthusiastic helper.

Early storms, good weather and the Visitors keep coming

A wee gallery of events in August, the Deer are getting fat, even Tufty has put on weight. The weather had been generally good but Storm Floris was quite damaging with heavy, heavy rain. An early storm that was not usual. Stalking continued as I tried to get my cull numbers in the limited time left. Every year we get new groups of folk visiting and this group of Botanists were over from Skye but they all said 4 hours was not enough, ah well there is always next year.

I think that groups like these find a wealth of ‘biodiversity’ on Rona and that is the surprise. Unfortunately I was not around having left on their boat with boxes of our effects to our new house. So I could not regale them with the reason for Red deer on Rona and the benefits of a totally natural herbivore on all the ‘biodiversity’ we have.

So there we have it, the start of the big move with Dan Corrigal our long time friend and aquaintance Who, very kindly is helping us by providing the boats that will remove us and our personal effects, which was a cost that we were not looking forward to funding ourselves, Thank you very much Dan.

It was a beautiful sunny calm day for our first of four boats, Dan also gave us the use of his van. Portree was busy, with a humungeous cruise ship in with lots of people wandering around Portree aimlessley. Remided me of sheep and as we headed to Camustianvaig, more of the same on the road in.

In the meantime my Sister flew over Rona, sending us this stunning aeriel shot.

Talking about Biodiversity- for those wondering: Biodiversity is all the different kinds of life you’ll find in one area—the variety of animals, plants, fungi, and even microorganisms like bacteria that make up our natural world.

In the picture above we have burrowing bees, the are obviously here forever as I first came across them by our Genny shed 23 years ago (but I am sure someone will ‘discover’ them in the future). I had not spotted them for many years but they were there for sure. This year they took up residence on this old bare earth bank where I had scraped off the top peaty layer to get road material but I never did get round to that road surfacing!! It is on the list.

The temperature was warmer this year for sure and the plethora of insects really spang to life, what a year for butterflies, dragonflies, all sorts of weird and colourful insects. The sea was busy and the heather really bloomed, the deepest purple I have seen for a long time. It was nice to enjoy on our last year here.

On a more serious note, we had reports of a break-in at the Base up North. It had certainly been abandoned We were concerned as we had suffererd a change in behaviour of visiting ‘boat people’. It appeared that due to various press reports on the sale of Rona, which were to say the least, of poor quality reporting. There was a thought that Big Harbour, our end of Rona, had been sold and was unoccupied. More on that later. In the meantime we visited the Base and were horrified to find the place not in good state. We notified those that we thought were caretaking the North end and left it at that (and more later on this too).

We have had small motor boats rock up to the pontoon, never having seen them before, on going down, by chance to the harbour on the ATV, they very quickly let their ropes go and took off!!!!! We have had yachts tie up only to be ‘surprised’ to be told to move. We have had people ignoring signs and coming into the curtilage of the properties, looking for Dry Harbour? Looking for showers (no towels or kit with them!! etc), “we got lost and came this way”. I have heard it all before, its called being nosey. I will not miss that bit.

The guy with the rubber boat was filling his tank up, I think he had four trips, he was anchored for most of the week and helped himself, enjoying the water and pontoon, tracks etc. Never left a bean, that’s not true he did buy a bit of venison. But hey, we ran out of water that week!!!! Not his fault but I will moan about it anyway.

And then there is this.

The ‘Right To Roam’ meant well but out here it seems to mean lets have a look inside every building we can, again I will not miss this. None of the above yachties would like it if I came around their house and poked my nose in, Why Here?

So to our very last cottage guests, Debbie and Dave, were husband and wife, now seperated but still together, on holiday at least. They love Rona and are among our long term visitors that kept coming back. They had booked two years ago and we honoured their booking. But time is running out so no more. We will miss all of our Cottage Guest returnees, our very good yachting friends (we have a few) and all the folk that have helped us over 23 years. But there are a few more blogs to come so no farewells yet.

So bringing us up to the end of August one more removal trip, MV Wavedancer this time.