Harry and Sophie.

Slightly belated Congratulations from all of us to Harry and Sophie who got married a few weeks back, many of you will know them for spending 18 months living in the dogshed here, helping us out and being generally lovely.

The Beermoth is back.

My intention, much to peoples surprise, is to keep the 'moth roadworthy, improving it, replacing bits and generally making her generate the money for her repairs by renting her out. After our marathon journey north last year there were a few issues, the lack of brakes being the main one, the fact that she was running like a dog being another. It took a day (in October last year) to figure out how to jack it up, then 5 minutes to find out I didn't have any spanners big enough to get the wheel nuts off. To the rescue came Mechty and Graham and she was jacked up and stripped down, revealing leaking cylinders and ruined shoes.

First mission was brake linings and this is not a case of popping down to Halfords, they are absolutely enormous. Some super sleuthing on the part of CV components in Inverness tracked some down the right size and they rebuilt the shoes. Stage 2 was the cylinders. New seals were no problem but life is never so simple and the cylinders ended up being machined out and treated to stainless steel liners and pistons so the back brakes, at least, should now outlast the truck. I also tracked down spark plugs, made up new HT leads, rebuilt the distributor and fiddled about with the timing until she was running a bit better. All this ran a bit over time so she was three weeks late into rental, thanks go to the boys for swinging back in and helping stick her back together and to everyone who has been so understanding about either being postponed or put up in the new bothy.

On the cosmetic side Aaron Sterritt made up a new chopping board and a little oak cupboard for inside, the bed got new rails, the floor had a coat of nice osmo wax oil and after a dozen attempts at matching the colour the back wall had a coat of paint. The only sacrifice I am going to have to make in the name of practicality is that the Rayburn is going to have to go. It's so beautiful and spot on date wise but even for the moth it is just too heavy hanging out the back like that so in the workshop at the moment sits a lovely (and still not insubstantial) Quebb stove awaiting a scrape and a lick of paint.

Rest assured the Rayburn wont go to waste.

A film from the archive.

While uploading some new videos for the Insider I found this video I made back in 2008, not long after we first came here and when were mid way through the big redecoration. Its set to a Session A9 tune and was made up of stills taken from the kitchen window, 900 of them in all, with a view a lot of you will find familiar. Now, 4 years later, Session A9 are headlining for us on the Sunday night at the Insider. Who would have thought it?

The Insider.

Apart from the sport (a subject we know little about and are not taking at all seriously) the Insider is getting organised this year. Rather than leaving everything to the last minute, and knowing that May plus June equals weddings, we decided to get on with extending and cladding the whisky bar. It's another skip dive spectacular. The larch shingles are offcuts from the bin at Russwood, the structure of the bar is old pallets clad with ends from Alvie sawmill (those are now into their third incarnation), Balvenie distillery donated a van load of barrels a couple of years back, the gate (not shown yet here) was from the tip and even the speed rails and shelves are made up from pallets, the only parts that money changed hands for are the battens at the back, a few posts and a lot of screws.

If anyone has a pile of old scaffolding boards or joists or floor boards or pretty much any useful old timber I would gladly take it off their hands, ideally in exchange for cider come festival time.

More press.

The press has found Inshriach recently and it seems like every weekend another feature pops out. Just this last month we have had an interiors feature on the main house in the Scotsman (accompanied by a lovely article about the whole estate) then Easyjet jumped in there with this piece on the estate and how we came to be here, then last weekend the Guardian ran this about the bothy and both the Independent and the Spectator ran stories about the Beermoth. Since Christmas the truck has appeared on Yahoo.com, American Express Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Red Magazine, Woman magazine, The Mail, the Metro, The Sun and Country Life. Her merry trample through the media is not over yet. Next week she comes home as yet another journalist arrives, this time covering the story on behalf of her truest fans. Only absolute afficionados would be count themselves among the readers of Classic Commercial magazine.

Woodworking courses.

There's another woodland oddity coming together at Inshriach. Woodentom is building a cruck framed workshop to move the carving and green woodworking courses out of the farmyard and into our oak woods, its going to be a beautiful secluded little spot. With any luck it will be finished in time for a suitably ungrand open day next weekend.

Here are some provisional dates for 2012 but Tom can arrange courses pretty much on demand if there is enough of a group interested. Contact him for prices and availability, woodentom1@gmail.com.

31st March - Open day.
12th May - Stool Making.
15th - 16th June - Insider Festival.
28th - 29th June - Shave horse making.
5th August - Fun day.
23rd - 24th - Rustic furniture.
13th October - Spoon carving.
27th October - Bowl Carving.
8th / 9th November - Rustic furniture.

There is also the coracle making course on the 25th - 27th May, you can read more about this here.

More rubbish sheds.

Another part of our plan to keep Inshriach sustainable involves taking as much of our firewood as we can from the estate. Last year we reckon around 15 tons was fed into the house and perhaps half of it we chopped and split ourselves. Storage is the problem, laying down the wood in suitable conditions to season properly. With the yurt, the beermoth, the house and two bothies all anticipating pretty strong levels of occupation it was time to get recycling.

The top shed was easy. 5 offcuts of wriggly tin from the tip, 5 pieces of wood, some screws and three half pallets. The bottom one was the result of a pile of used 4 inch posts and 6 more sheets of salvaged tin sitting dangerously close to each other and getting in the way for a few months. I'm not quite sure what to clad it with but something will no doubt appear.

Now we need to go out and chop some logs.