The solar wood shed.

In order to make way for the Railway station a double garage in the farmyard is going to have to come down. That in itself is no great problem except that it carries 10 not very well orientated solar panels and I don't want to put them back onto the station once it is up. The woodshed that services the yurt and beermoth is also in the station's path so on nice days we have been building something that will perform both functions, and get maximum solar gain both for the panels and for seasoning the wood in the shed. We started with a lot of digging and a concrete pad which cost only £1 more than we got for a trailer full of scrap metal, and the rest is pine logs we felled round the estate pegged together with chunky oak dowels.

If anyone is getting rid of some reasonably straight corrugated iron we can get it finished under our budget (of nothing).

Dune and Bertie photoshoots.

Back in May we had another shoot at Inshriach, the fruits of which are now creeping into shops and magazines and spreading across the net. The current catalogues for Dune and Bertie, as well as in store and film campaigns are all Inshriach based. They were shot by Esther Hasse, organised by the agent Terrie Tanaka and produced by Location Scotland and I will post more of the pictures and films as they appear.

The eagle eyed amongst you will spot locations in the house, by the loch and down by the march pool in the Dune campaign with the Bertie shoot focusing its efforts at the yurt. To top it all Monty has a new career and a couple of the more unusual vehicles from the Inshriach stable had an outing.

Homes from Homes.

And in a week of full blown press and publication, Vinny Lee's new book Homes from Home 'Inventive Small spaces from chic shacks to cabins and caravans' has just come out featuring the Beermoth. Its a beautifully researched book and full of ideas if you are planning on going down the route of building something small and unusual.

Marie Claire Maison on the Bothy.

For the French speakers out there our second outing in Marie Claire Maison this year has just hit the news stands, this time featuring the Bothy Project.

Magazin Smak

SMAK 4 - Scottish Source from SMAK magazyn on Vimeo.

Here is a wee film made here in June in association with the Polish slow food magazine Smak. You can get a little glimpse of the base camp we had set up at the March pool for the Insider and which kept everyone laid back while the railway station came apart.

150 years and a day.

Yesterday marked 150 years to the day since the Inverness to Perth Junction Railway (and therefore Dalnaspidal station) ran its first service. It was also my 35th birthday. My very long suffering and architecturally talented friend Hannah Buss spent the weekend here and we have finally reconfigured the station to how we want it and knocked the plans into shape. We have also done the drawings for converting the farm steading and the chicken sheds into houses and come clean on the various off grid holiday nonsense we have built over the last few years. Today all of that has gone off to set the ball rolling for the pre planning process.

Now we just need a surveyor for the barn, an engineer to spec a substantial retaining wall and a pot of money to get things moving so if anyone can help us with any of that we would be very grateful.

Railway Records - The Movie.

Huge thanks to Fergus Thom for coming along and dealing with our nonsense to put together this great little film of the railway coming apart and also to old pals of Inshriach and long time stars of the Insider, the John Langan Band for lending us some tunes to go with it. Next week our very long suffering architect Hannah Buss is coming to finish the drawings (not just the station, we intend to turn the farmyard into an accompanying complex by converting the steading into a house, kitchen and new bathrooms and turning the chicken sheds into somewhere people can stay) and we have now got only a few weeks before the dream team of Jon, Wolfie and Jacob head north to see how far we can stretch our meagre budget...

Its time for some more Funraising, thank you very much to the people who have already supported this most hairbrained of ideas, we couldnt have done it without you.