More news from the bar.

Last Friday George Clarke's team phoned to say they were in Scotland and they wanted to film the various bits and bobs we have going on at Inshriach. That was just the kick in the proverbial a**e that we needed. On Friday there was nothing in the bar apart from a half hearted attempt at the bar itself, there was also nothing but tools in what subsequently became the piano bar, and not a stick of stock in the shop. And half the windows were out and there were no lights.

In went the piano, some corner cupboards from the barn, a pair of spectacular and slightly soggy green gold velour armchairs, loads of stuff from the tip, blackboards, a dressers worth of dubious booze and some pub lights. Money changed hands but only to the tune of the £40 it took to have the last 3 signs made up and for the bottle of wine it took to hang them at 1 in the morning.

So this is how it looks now. Next stage is to build a new hen house and evict the chickens because at some point in the next fortnight some lovely copper stills are arriving the distillery can be commissioned.

Getting on with the shop / distillery / bar etc.

We are finally making moves to sort out the farm shop and get our planning permission for the station and the barn conversion into a usable form. The latest hurdle came Hannahs hard drive with all the drawings and 5 years worth of pre planning decided to give up the ghost so everything now has to be arduously transcribed back from the printed copies.

In order to submit the application (once the transcribing is done) we also had to conduct a bat survey. It turns out that we have a little roost of pipistrelles in the roof of the barn but nothing that is going to get in the way of phase one, a pair of new bathrooms to serve the off grid holiday business. We also have enormous roosts in two of the cottages so we would like to thank the bats for their convenient choice of residence.

To celebrate this non-wildlife event we busted out the stihl saw and the chainsaw and started cutting holes in the chicken sheds. This building will end up containing the stills for Crossbill, a small and very curious residents bar and a shop with unusual whittled gifts, tweed hats, storm kettles and other essential items for life on the range.