Knoydart: Safely in our new home (!)
Home. We are now in residence! We completed or whatever its called up here on Friday. Also on Friday our car had its own adventure coming over on Spanish John to join us.
I need to digress a little and explain about Spanish John. Or more accurately Spanish John II. When we first came here at the beginning of the year I originally thought the name was some sort of nickname for the skipper but it was the name of the vessel and that she was named after a Knoydart resident of yore. There’s a short bio here: https://coast.scot/stories/the-story-of-spanish-john/ if you’re interested.
It’s Spanish John II because someone managed to sink the first. Details of here: https://www.milligantransportltd.co.uk/spanish-john.html#ad-image-0
Anyway, Spanish John safely delivered our car which was full to the gunnels of our belongings so on Friday afternoon we drove to Camusblathan to unload it.
It’s only 7 miles with about 6.5 of single track tarmac and the final half mile of rough track (this is slightly different to my earlier estimates but hey, so what?) but it takes about half an hour. There is virtually no traffic, but there is some, and by the immutable laws of nature, as where in a narrowboat one would always meet the only boat of the day at a bridgehole, so on the road to Airor you only meet that one car on a blind bend with a 200 foot drop on one side and no safety barriers. So 20 is plenty. And too much in places. Hence an average speed of 14mph. The most unnerving things are the numerous summits. The gradient can be 1 in 3 or 4 up, and suddenly it’s 1 in 3 or 4 down, and one is looking through the windshield at nothing but sky. Once we get used to the road it should be less traumatic but it’s a great white knuckle ride at the moment.
So that was Friday. We stayed the night with Ben and Jenny and left with our remaining belongings on Saturday morning to begin our new life of perfect peace and tranquillity.
Except.
As you know, or should if you’ve been paying attention, we are off grid. No mains water, electricity, gas, or drainage. No problem. Just like living on a narrowboat.
Except.
The diesel had in the past been delivered by a certain person who was now busy fitting out a vessel to go to the artic. ( I’ll not be sidetracked so won’t go into that). The vendor of the property admitted he’d been awaiting a diesel delivery for months and had been keeping the lights on by transferring a few litres now and again from his own tank. For some reason he didn’t seem willing to continue doing that after our purchase. Hey Ho. But the fuel level was low. Limbo dancing low. So via Ben we made a few calls and managed to get a container of 1,000 litres delivered this morning (Saturday). If you think this story lacks a punchline, hang on, it’s because I haven’t got to it.
The fuel arrived in an IBC. An IBC is one of those plastic cubes in a metal frame that you see a lot around farms. Holds 1,000 litres. Unfortunately means of transfer from IBC to our tank were sadly lacking. The tractor driver was incredibly helpful, first by saying that he had a pump but that it was broken, then by saying “Jim might have one I’ll go and ask.” Jim was a not so near neighbour. I should also mention the rain. Mm. Perhaps not.
Grant (the tractor driver) eventually returned empty handed. We stood discussing the problem (in that rain I didn’t mention), when the generator kicked in. It automatically starts when the batteries reach a certain depleted level. Grant listened. “Sounds to me as though it’s running out of diesel, best switch it off.” So we did.
It’s quite frustrating having a 1000 litres of diesel sitting 10 feet away from where it needs to be and not being able to use it. I did broach the idea of simply opening the tap, filling a bucket and pouring it in to it’s eventual home. A suggestion met with some scepticism. Possibly because the outlet tap had a diameter of 2–3 inches and with a head of a 1000 litres Grant seemed to think it might come out under a certain amount of pressure. I bowed to his superior knowledge.
We spent Saturday afternoon conserving our energy requirements!
At the time of writing (Saturday evening) we have located a hand pump back in Inverie so I will go over in the morning and then spend the day pumping the diesel slowly out.
Watch this space.
Are you watching?
Sunday morning arrived dank and dismal. A true Scottish November day (I’m told). Irrespective of what the weather did I had to get some diesel in the tank, so first thing after breakfast (porridge of course, but not with salt) planned to drive back to Inverie to pick up the hand pump.
Before I did I thought I should check I could actually get the hatch on the IBC open. Good plan. I couldn’t. It had a diameter of about 8 inches and I had to stand on the edge of the top most of the three pallets we had the IBC balanced on to reach it, and couldn’t get any purchase at all. Note to self: Add ladder to list of things to borrow. We have ladders. At least three. But they are all in the store with our furniture in Durham. So a search around the shed brought to light an axe and a piece of wood, and with a little bit of brute force I managed to shift the cap.
Off to Inverie. Pick up pump and ladder. Return to Airor. Have coffee while waiting for rain to ease. I had realised all by myself that opening the top of a container of diesel while someone threw buckets of water out of the sky was not the most sensible action.
The rain eventually abated. Note the word abated rather than stopped. It had reduced to a mizzle. You know, the rain where you don’t notice it raining, but end up getting soaked.
The batteries were getting dangerously depleted so we (I’ve decided to try sharing the blame here, in case the generator packed up due to water contamination so refrain from using the more correct ‘I’) decided to try to transfer some diesel.
This involved me up a ladder leaning across the IBC holding the pump in one hand and turning the handle with the other at full arm stretch while Sarah stood on a chair holding the 10 litre canister, and a funnel, and guiding the solid hose from the pump in generally the right direction. I suppose if one were a cup half full type of person you could say that the advantage of the fact it was raining — sorry mizzling — was that it washed off a good quantity of the diesel that was saturating our clothes and splashing our faces. Having given the pump fifty turns we — I — decided to check we could pour it into the tank. Amazingly the answer was yes. So we repeated the exercise another three times which I reckoned had emptied the IBC of perhaps thirty litres and put something closer to twenty in the tank.
Time to fire up the generator. Or go back to Ben and Jenny’s and call out an engineer.
The joy of joys! It started. And ran. And ran. We now have topped-up batteries! Yay!
We also have another nine hundred and seventy litres to transfer.
Does anyone fancy coming and staying for a few days? We have this new hobby which I’m sure you’d enjoy.
