New website and blog.

With the new Inshriach House website getting up and running over this weekend we have a new format for blog posts so all future installments will appear directly onto the website rather than going up here. We havent gone away, we are just moving to a more modern platform. See you there. www.inshriachhouse.com

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.

Lloyd Kahn - Tiny Homes on the Move, feat. the Beermoth.

A lovely book has just appeared through the post, this time from the author of the exceptional 'Shelter' and 'Homework". Tiny Homes on the Move features all sorts of amazing tales of 21st Century nomads and their creations, from trucks to school buses, boats to gypsy caravans. And it has a great big spread on the Beermoth, which is a real honour and we are mighty chuffed.

Photo Location work at Inshriach.

Last week we had a crew staying here and shooting the Autumn / Winter catalogue for Plumo. We did the catering, took them round, showed them all the best weather faded walls, crumbling textures, photogenic outbuildings and riverside vistas and then they got on with it.

Our new website will have a section dedicated to location work as it becomes an increasingly important and entertaining strand of the business here. Regular holiday rentals will only ever get to see a little fraction of what goes on here and we are going to have a scale of location fees depending on how much access and which buildings are required. You can get a good idea of what Inshriach has to offer by looking at our flickr page.

I will have some proper pictures from the shoot to post in a few weeks time but in the meantime here is a terrible one of them shooting outside the bothy.

The vegetable gardens get moving.

I have been trying to get a team photo with everyone who now lives at Inshriach and even on this, the ceremonial first potato planting, we are still short of Brook and Jake. 2014 will be the first year we have had enough interested folk here to really make the most of the Edwardian kitchen gardens and at this rate we will all be eating like kings in a month or two. We will also have loads of good produce to put into the farm shop (when we finish building it).

Axe throwing at Inshriach.

At Inshriach House we have never really done activities. Between Woodentom and the new crew here all that is about to change. If your idea of a good weekend is some oddball combination of axe throwing, elaborate treasure hunts, a wood fired riverside spa, tasty food and somewhere really unusual to stay then you have probably come to the right place.