arisaig

Farewell Arisaig & hello home!

We have been offline for some time now due to the internet being over tired and lying under the rug pretending not to exist, refusing to communicate with anyone.  So to fill you in (I’m sure you are all long past caring about our antics by now but hey, this blog is our diary, it’s got nothing to do with you chumps), we’ve done this:

  1. I've been learning the Adobe Suite & drawing lots of creepy pictures in Illustrator.
  2. I've done most of an online creative writing course (which I was unable to finish due to its online nature).
  3. Isaac went to Birmingham for 3 days to attend a table-top gaming convention (lotsa d&d n dice porn).  He got to experience the overnight bus (twice) to save money on accommodation.
  4. We visited the most westerly lighthouse in Scotland with our neighbours (fellow volunteers from NZ with whom we share the pleasure of scrubbing dunnies & cutting brambles with).
  5. We’ve discovered that Scotland is full of ticks.
  6. Isaac got a haircut.
  7. We’ve taken a number of baths.
  8. We went sailing!  A first for me.  I have to say..it’s pleasant for sure, but too much effort.  Also the boat had a leak and was ¼ full of water by the time we managed to get to the jetty.
  9. We had a barbeque on a white sandy beach that is only accessible by boat or 2 hour hike. We found a bag of onions washed up on the beach and did the only thing conceivable – cooked & ate them.  Brilliant.  This has been the highlight of our time here I think (the beach, not the onions).  We also had venison burgers, corn on the cob and booze.
  10. We ran out of water.  Being a large private estate in the sticks, it has its own drainage system.  Our tanks are empty…so no toilet flushing or water in the taps.  Guess who’s smelly and needs to poop!  The less glamorous side of highland mansion living.
  11. We are going to Glasgow for 3 nights next Saturday
  12. We head home on Tuesday 8th July…bring on 21 hours of flight and 10 hours of sitting in airports.

Every day or two I still stop and think ‘Wow…I’m in the Scottish highlands!’  It is just beautiful, and after being here for a short time it becomes plain why Scots are so passionate about their country.  It stirs something in you..the hills, the lochs..just all of it.  We are very much looking forward to seeing how the independence vote goes in September.

This is our last Help-x until we go home for 6 weeks.  We’ve been here in Arisaig for about 2.5 months and it has just flown by.  We’ve done housekeeping for the luxury rooms in the house, cleaned the self-catering cottages, washed dishes, learned how to set a table formally, waitressed/waited, bar tended, worked at a wedding, pulled weeds, mowed with a ride on mower, cut brambles and got molested by stinging nettles, and designed an in-room photobook and new menus.

We’ve met people that we will never forget.  Like every other help-x abode we’ve been at, it’s been the souls who work their butts off beside you for peanuts who make the whole experience really worthwhile.  All of the staff on the property here are fun to be around and just great people.  Our fellow help-xers (they are actually from WorkAway which is similar) are a retired couple from Auckland who are just amazing.  They’ve got way more energy than us (and can also drink a hell of a lot more than us) and have a brilliant sense of humour.  We will miss our new friends from NZ a lot, but they can expect a visit from us when we finally make it to their neck of the woods to see all the rellies.  Our livers are not going to be friends with us after our New Zealand trip I think.

Also I have to mention Alice, a fellow Woof-er (like Helpx).  Just hilarious and such a sweet girl. Anyone who’s met her knows what I mean!

We’ve decided to travel through France, Spain and Portugal when we return in late August.  We will look to Helpx while we are there as the old purse is rather light at this stage in the game.  Also, we’re quite well known for being crap tourists.  We spend a lot of days off just hanging around and not sightseeing.  We know this is terrible.  I guess though, we just aren’t tourists.  We came here for a mental break, not to rush around and see everything (besides, in the UK you could see everything there is to see during your lunch break).  We have 2 years here, so we’ve been very happy to dial down the energy.  So Helpx works for us; we get to experience living in places rather than just rushing around and seeing the stuff that is on postcards.  We have done so much that we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do had we been travelling around on our own – such as a bbq on a secluded beach, a Viking longboat bonfire, haggis nachos, hiking through misty mountains, and getting completely steamboats with amazing people from all over the world.

We are looking forward to getting home..first thing I’m doing (after sleeping for 2 days..and also getting my eyebrows waxed, ye gods) is going to the fruit & veg shop!  Anyone who’s been to Europe knows what I’m talking about.  We’ve missed the internet sorely, however it’s given us a good chunk of time to do things like reading, and heaven forbid – socialising.  We’ve both put on a few kilos (or more), which isn’t too bad considering we’ve been living on fattening hobo cuisine for 9 months now.  We are both looking forward to getting back in shape, back online and also replenishing our packs with fresh hole-less undies.   

We are also looking forward to hugging the people we love.  And getting drunk with them.

*sent from Heathrow airport.  Photos coming once the Aussie internet god shakes his magical junk in our direction* 

Scottish Mist

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where there is a flu epidemic, and the flu germs travel around in visible clouds and attack people?  That is just what Scottish Mist is like, except the germs are midges, and they don’t just bite you and move on.  They surround you and stuff themselves into every pore of skin you have whether it’s covered by clothing or not, and suck your blood.  Over, and over, and over, and over again.  The only way to describe them is ‘little F*CKING bastards!!’

There are repellents you can buy which can be effective when you are going for a short stroll and there aren’t many midges around.  However on a day when it’s wind-less and damp, the air is visibly thick with them and no amount of poison will keep from thirsting for your blood.

We’ve both spent a few days in the garden this week getting the place tidied up for an ‘open garden’ day for charity.  The day went really well and the gardens looked smashing, but let it be known that it was at the cost of blood.  Our blood. And lots of it. 

Pictures will be forthcoming as soon as god consumes an overly greasy god-sized recovery breakfast.

Arisaig House - a land of white sandy beaches and lounging Labradors.

 

We have settled into Helpx No.4 – Arisaig House.  It’s a luxury B&B on the western coast of Scotland just across the ditch from the Isle of Skye.  Since arriving here a week ago, we’ve had nothing but clear blue skies and sunshine.  Seriously, it’s been shorts & singlet weather, and once again I wish I’d brought a pair of damn shorts (you are going to Scotland, you won’t need shorts! I said to myself when we were packing… stupid stupid stupid).  Even the dogs are playing in the ponds and sleeping on the cool gravel rather than the nice soft grass. 

Arisaig House is gorgeous.  It is a big old stone building which has 10 luxury rooms inside the main house and 3 self catering cottages further out on the grounds for people to rent for the week.  And when I say luxury, I mean that guests sleep nestled into a plush king-sized mass of feathers from a billion now-naked birds, they bathe looking out of a large window down onto a field below full of geese and sheep, and they stretch on their own lounge looking out over gardens to the beach which is within walking distance.  We are surrounded by mountains which seems to create a summery micro-climate like we haven’t experienced in Scotland before.  Frankly, it’s too damn hot.  We have a suitcase full of gloves and thermals…where’s the frost!?  But I suppose the vast majority of people here think the weather is just the bees knees and couldn’t be happier.  Weirdos.

An English family own the B&B and work in it themselves which is really nice.  The water is undrinkable as they have a private water system thingy, so we can only drink bottled or boiled water.  Or wine.  Or beer.  Or cider.  Or vodka and soda water, which is drinking plus staying hydrated, not to mention low calorie – winning!

Our work here has been varied and pretty laid back so far.  We do housekeeping in the cottages and inside rooms (cleaning, making beds etc) and also helping with the gardening.  Yesterday Isaac helped make a fire to burn leaf-matter garbage, and today we chopped logs so they can dry over the summer ready for use in the winter.  I got to use a hydraulic log splitter for the first time…it’s the first time I’d heard of such a thing too.  Basically you put a smallish log in it, then press a button and it pushes it onto a sharp edge like an axe head, and keeps pushing it onto it until it splits.  It was fairly tame, but all I could think of was horrifically chopping my fingers off.  Our boss took pity on my coward-ess after lunch and let me clean dishes instead.  It’s kinda funny…I think it’s absolutely outrageous and insulting that a man wouldn’t help in the home because it’s ‘woman’s work’, but when it comes to splitting logs or spraying the wasp nest…. I’m sorry, you want me to help you do what?  What logs? Split what? What what?  Shame on me.  It’s just that I’m a coward you see.  And most ‘man’s work’ isn’t just dirty or unpleasant, women’s work has oodles of that, it’s that it’s dangerous.  Would I rather Isaac loose his fingers?  Of course not.  Do I think he has less of a chance of burying an axe into his shin than I would?  Yes, definitely.  It’s not sexism.  Had Isaac used a log splitter before today either?  No.  But I don’t see how that’s relevant….

We get our own apartment on the property which is awesome, and we don’t even have to share it with anyone!  There are drawbacks to this place too, such as the internet and our lack thereof.  They may be fixing it later on, but for now there is a spot in the kitchen and a spot on the window sill where you can get one bar of slow internet connection.  It’s amazing what you can get used to.  It is a lot harder to procrastinate when you can’t jump onto Pinterest, so I’m trying to take advantage of the situation and do lots of reading, writing, going for walks or runs…oh which reminds me – I impaled my foot on a big rusty bit of metal! 

The sun lured us out in our last week on Skye last week and we went for a walk along the beach.  Walking very slowly, I tripped.  I couldn’t move my leg much and looked down to see a big bendy piece of wire (I guess a little thicker than a coat hanger) stuck through the front of my shoe.  It felt like it had gone a fair way into my shoe which is why it didn’t just fall out when I tried to shake it.  Isaac pulled it out and I took off my shoe expecting to see a sock soaked in blood.  It wasn’t.  But there was a little puncture mark in the ball of my foot just below my toes.  ‘Hmm…I guess I got poked a little’ I thought to myself.  Isaac helped me hobble back to the hostel and we sat down with a cup of tea and a bandaid.  After a while, a line started to swell from the puncture hole down the ball of my foot to where the arch starts.  With a slow creeping horror the realisation struck – ‘Holy snapping duck shit, it went in that far!!’.  Tetanus is for sissies, so I decided I would only go to a doctor if my leg started to show signs of wanting to come away from my torso. 

It’s been a week now and it’s healing well.  My foot puffed up like a not-so-delicious foot soufflé for a couple of days, but that’s all gone now.  It’s just a little tender and my gimp-limp is barely noticeable.

Oh and in other news – I’ve been cooking!  I haven’t made one stir-fry..Mum and Jess would be so proud.  I’ve made a tomato chicken bake, creamy marinated baked chicken, bacon wrapped chicken (there was a chicken special at the food store), hamburger soup, and last night we had roast pork with steamed greens, roast potatoes & onion, and super burnt (oops) crackling. 

We’ve also had a few memorable dates come and go this month:

  • We've been overseas for 6 months.
  • We had our 8 year anniversary together & our 4th wedding anniversary.

So that pretty much wraps up our adventures over the last couple of weeks.  Isaac is going by himself down to Birmingham to a games convention thingy at the end of May.  We will be staying here until we go home in July, so I’ll have lots of opportunities to get oot and aboot once my foot heals completely and explore the woods and beaches.