Hi Hoooooooooo!

 My Xmas week is over and I had to take Kieran back to his mums this morning so I dropped him off on the way into the office.

It's always a sad day when he goes back, however it's New Years Eve so I imagine that tonight I won't be my usual 'Kieran has gone away' miserable, or if I am at least I may be very drunk when doing it!
There has been a fairly large amount of rain over the last week which has led to the ford on the river being higher than usual, luckily this isn't the way out of Garrigill, but that isn't to say that the drive this morning didn't

involve various flooded roads and bridges. It kept our interest when every time we turned a corner there was a bit of a splash. It makes the journy more fun anyway.

Earlier in the week the hills got a touch of the white stuff, it was a surprise when it didn't work it's way lower but yet again we seem to have escaped. 
The morning drive in is getting noticably lighter too as that extra 11 minutes a day starts to add up.

At work I have hung up my new calender. This year I will be treated to the dream of a VW camper van every new month, and meanwhile Akasha keeps painting things that remind me of summer....and driving around in a VW Camper.... Perhaps one day!
It has been a fantastic week, one of the best christmas's for a long time.
I'm feeling all warm and content, must be the new hats...or the company I am now keeping
:-)

A Man of Many Hats

The shortest day may have passed but it is still very much winter.
In the summer this place may become an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) but right now in the dead of winter it truly is the Arse End Of Nowhere, and as it has different types of rain, hail, snow and other cold wetness falling from the sky, you really do need a variety of hats to deal with them all.
I have mentioned in the past 'ways to tell the weather' in the AEON and another one of the ways is to look at the types of hats that the locals may be wearing when out.

Most people have some sort of leather or oilskin fully waterproof for the torrential downpourings and after that you go into hats of various stages of wet weather and warmth right through to summer ones for eye and sun protection.
A quick look out of the window at any time and as long as you can see through the lashing rain at the hats you can always tell just how much it's raining and how cold it is.

This year I received many hats as Christmas presents as my stock of various weather hats is low. This is because I am still a newbie out here and I have yet to set myself up fully for the various weathers that I see out of the window. hats and gloves and various coats are much needed and very well received, but by far the most talked about and best hats this year were a present from Karl, Sue and family over in the USA.

Without any prior knowledge of the importance of headwear to this very climate sensitive area they sent us matching AEON hats which have gone down a storm in the George and Dragon.

Yes, in a place where hats are a way of life (or death) a good hat is a conversation piece and our new hats have really gone down well with the friends.

Over the last few days there have been a few flickerings of power and once or twice we have wondered if we would be plunged into darkness for a day or four.
It hasn't happened yet, but we are expecting it, probably at the time when the snow is deepest and the logs for the burner are low.
You can tell I'm an optimist eh?

So far it's been a damned easy Christmas. We have not been snowed in, not once! The rain has fell in buckets, but this is the place where all rivers start and so we don't flood, all the water from here usually ends up around the cities causing problems for those who don't live in the wilderness, so we may have to have very fine hats of various types, but we leave the choices of waders to the people in the lowlands.

The lights just flickered again! I am told if the power goes off that the village meets in the pub!
I'm not sure of there is any reason for this other than the ale is hand pulled and they have a huge log fire for warmth it may even be because everyone checks that everyone is ok. I imagine it's the former as that seems to be the better reason, and everyone here likes a reason to meet up so perhaps losing power is a sure time to arrange to meet your mates and have a laugh about the power going off.

Whatever the true reason is, I don't feel (being a newbie) that I should try and change a schedule brought on by years of power loss and community spirit.

It's winter! It's cold, and this is the Arse End of Nowhere!
I have a hat to prove it. I'm not about to fight tradition so if those with more experience think a trip to the pub in the dark is the way that things should be, who am I to argue,  because for sure you can't argue with a man who knows the right headgear for any circumstances, no matter how foolish he looks.

Ready Steady...

It's raining in the Arse End of Nowhere. It's been raining pretty heavy for many days and thanks to the time of year every droplet carries that icy winter sting that feels like a freezing pin prick on contact.
None of this really matters of course because it's close to Christmas and also because as Billy Connolly once said "There's no such thing as bad weather...just the wrong clothes" Out here we all have the right clothes and these usually include some sort of neck and hand warming device, various hats (of which there will be a blog soon) and multi functional coats.

It's only a few days until Christmas now. I have one more day at work tomorrow and I am picking up my son on Christmas eve from his mum and I have him for the whole week :-D

Everything is ready here, the attic room which was storage has now been made into his room, all presents are either hidden or wrapped and there is about four days worth of dry logs stacked around the fire ready to add the colour, warmth, smell and atmosphere that only a log fire can bring.

 We managed to get a mix of the old and new which suits the cottage quite well. There was a search for holly, which would you believe is quite hard to find in the middle of the english countryside, do we have a national holly shortage or something? However in the end we managed to find some which went very nicely onto the fire held in place by the skulls and the coca cola santa clause's :-)

Those who used to read my old blog will remember that I don't like to cut tree's for Xmas so last year I sprayed a dead twig and hung things from it. I think that may be a Xmas tradition that keeps going with my wonderful new life. This year we went out with the dogs and found a piece of Hawthorn that sprayed up lovely and looks damn fine. It's a bit quirky, but as we keep getting told we are both 'just the right amount of strange', and for the second year running I can happily say that "no tree's were harmed in the making of this Xmas"
It's going to be a very good Christmas in Garrigill, family, warmth and the company of nice people from the village so in the end, who cares if it rains?

Meanwhile the local metropolis of Alston (population 1.800) brushed up the cobbles and set the lights atop the market cross which on dark nights ensures that no trucks drive into it. I'm not quite sure if it would be seen from Google maps though.

See how the road is wet in that picture.....raining.....!!!

Tis The Season

In 7 days it will be Xmas day. It's a strange sort of christmas but one that I am looking to enjoy because I will be with my youngest son and my girlfriend for a whole week. We are spending it in Garrigill in the cottage and we are going to have a traditional christmas with joy & laughter, pressies, home cooked christmas dinner, log fires and I hope a smattering of snow.
I don't usually get into christmas early, and I can't say I will ever be one of these people that puts the decorations up in November or early December. For me christmas usually starts when we have the works christmas party and that was just a few days ago.
This one was better than the last couple of parties were for me because I went without a companion to the last two. This year, not the case :-) This year I am with someone sociable who dances and joins in and my eldest son also works with me so he and Kasha got to do a bit of mad dancing together when my feet gave out.

I always had a good christmas as a child. I am lucky that I have lovely parents who always did their best and tried to make things special. That magic sort of goes away for a few years in youth when you spend christmas away or alone but it soon comes back when you have children and they make the magic happen all over again.

My youngest is 15 now and I imagine in a few years that he will be making his own Christmas without me and my christmas day will become more sedate, and quiet but at least not lonely.
I was thinking back a little earlier, last year was quite a bad christmas day. Since the end of my marriage we have passed Kieran about on Christmas day, and last year I woke to an empty house because he was with his mum until lunch time.
At that time I was a month out of another relationship and I felt pretty low counting the minutes until he walked through the door with my mind wandering to other places and wondering what it was like to not be sitting there with nobody. Of course I wasn't the only person in the world that was going through that, and at this time of year the media doesn't help with the adverts of family and friends and people together. The sharing message is not what you want to see when you are 'not through choice alone'.
My...how different things are just a year in the future.

I am looking forward to going home tonight, I have a box of decorations that will be placed in special places around the cottage, I will laugh as someones face goes grumpy and grimacy (in fun) because she likes a pagan christmas, but I will find crowns of oak and holly and we will mix evergreens with Coca Cola santa and bouncy snowmen and see what comes.

At least this year I have access to a real chimney which is always important for the leaving of the mince pie.

Relax

It's nice to have a very well used village hall, and Garrigill does have one that it both well used and well supported not least thanks to some individuals in the village who do lots of fundraising.
What this means is that if you need the hall it is quite easy to get use of it and last weekend it was used for an 80's night with much dressing up, lots of retro 80's dancing and overall a massive amount of fun.
As usual most of the dancing was done by the girls, but the whole atmosphere and dress up was fantastic, and as I dribbled more wine into myself and with the extra help of a few G&T's supplied by a new friend even I started to jiiggle a bit by the end of the night.
Next time I want a flourescent wig...

49 Years in the post.

 Weather seems to be having a small effect. On Tuesday the North East had 2cm of snow, a pitiful amount that brought traffic to a standstill and had me driving 3 hours to get to the AEON, 2 hours of that on the A1 doing 1/2 a mile an hour.
Then on Thursday the snow decided to trick me as we had chilly rain all the way apart from the one section of the road that sits at 2000ft up which decided to have 8 inches of snow in just one single 2 mile section.....on a slight incline. Believe me, a Ford Focus without socks gets a bit slippy slidy in fresh snow, and didn't it just have to be on the bit with the highest drop over the edge. It's all exciting stuff, but I had to get to Garrigill as there was a long weekend arranged for Kasha's birthday. I arrived back to see her fretting over a painting while I fretted over the lack of snow socks for the car, this snow sock thing may be a recurring blog entry until I get some. Xmas is coming, perhaps I will get socks in my stocking?
On that thought, I learned the lesson a while ago that women don't think like men at Xmas.
Men, and by that I mean proper men tend to be functional and we don't mind getting presents that we need in order to do a thing. Screwdriver sets, saws, things for bending pipes...all of these things are good as Xmas presents. However..... a woman may go on for ages about a slow cooker or special pans or other functional stuff and other such things not kitchen related, but if you buy one as a present you end up wearing it. It's a concept that for men is hard to understand and often painful to learn.

Which moves un on quite nicely to the birthday girl. There was a promise of breakfast in bed, but in the end it was decided to have breakfast downstairs while watching the rain through the AEON window. Then on to the opening of the cards.

The highlight of the morning came when on just the right day (birthday) the postman dropped a big package through the door that had come from America.
There was much excitement as the packet was poked and prodded, shook, sniffed by the dogs and then exitedly torn open.

There has never been a brother at birthday time before and so this was and exciting moment.

The top was off, the nose was poked in and what emereged was one of the lovliest birthday thoughts I have ever come across.
If you don't know the story read the blogs earlier in the month, but to summarise Kasha knew she had kin through her fathers side but never knew who or where and we found her brother a few weeks ago. For the first time in her life she has family beyond her mum. 

And then she had birthday cards.
One for every year of her life that she and Karl had missed.
49 hand written birthday cards, each with a special message relating to what was happening in the year it should have been sent.
There were smiles and tears, and weepy warm bits at some of the messages. There were 49 years of laughter and joy and sadness and sharing, it was lovely.
Of course now Karl can say that he never ever missed a single one of his sisters birthdays and Kasha has a set of cards to remind her of that, and they will be treasured forever. There is already a search for a special box to put them in.

I like happy endings

Socks x2

It's minus 5....I need my car socks....

Socks!

We are expecting a drop of snow or so in the next few days and as the AEON is down in a valley (a valley that sits at +1000ft above sea level) I am expecting that there may be an issue getting out.
The thing about valleys is that they are really easy to get into in any weather, but when snow is on the ground a good valley is quite hard to get out of.
No matter which way I go to try and get out I have to climb straight up about 500ft.
Last week it was mentioned in the pub by an AEON expert that my car might need snow socks. I know that when walking the dogs that my feet need snow socks, preferably in multi pairs but I had never heard of snow socks for cars. Chains...yes, snow tyres....yes but socks? This seems to be a new thing.

So I have been trawling the great interweb of knowledge and I now know an awful lot about snow socks, but the bad things I have learned are; 
A, Granny can't knit them for me and 
B: They only come in one colour.
It isn't fair, I want my car to have rastafarian snow socks, and if they could be knitted out of that camel hair bristly sharp painful wool that my nan used to make jumpers out of for me then I am guessing that the traction would be great because no matter how soggy my old school jumpers got, they always had spikes.
 
So I need to get some snow socks, and lets just hope that the postie can get in to us to deliver them.
 

How to tell the weather

It's usually raining, but if for some reason you can't hear the drops of rain on the window and you get confused then the best way to check what the weather is doing is to go outside and look at Sissy.
That explains why my feet were so cold.....

+24

It's been a very strange day. The events explained in the blog below seem to be ringing a little bell in our lives and the two of us feel all warm and fuzzy and happy and lots of other nice things. 
It's weird, I am by nature a grumpy owld bugger with no sense of humour. 
Yes for my new American readers, humour has a 'u' in it.... and don't get me onto the correct pronunciation of alluminium.
I try to hide this deeply morose personality with a facade of mirth and smiles and jolly stories but I am in reality just a crotchety git who has been forced for many years to work with computers. For those of you that don't know about working with computers, imagine 12 hormonal teenage girls stuffed in a box, each with their own agenda and you have to make them work. 1 computer = 12 hormonal teenage girls. This may be why computers are the most vandalised (with an s) household item.
See, my natural argumentative state just started to come through for a moment, but now I am all over warm and fuzzy again. It's a family thing. I'm feeling it with Kasha.
Sweet!

Somebody shoot me!

It's a small world......

I have seen wonderful things transpire this weekend, I have seen a woman with no family gain a huge family, I have seen tears and smiles and fear and joy in the woman that I love and it has been a wonderful thing to have been a part of that. Her life has gained significant people and when you have never had significant people before that is such a life changing thing.

Kasha's dad left when she was eight years old. He didn't leave well and he left a legacy behind him. Sadly, she wasn't the first to have experienced his self centered, care nothing for nobody but himself attitude.
All he left her with was a name, it was a small thing as in reality we actually don't know for sure if the name he used in the eight years that he was around her was his birth name or real name. But she had his name, and it turns out that so did someone else.

The someone else was Karl, he is Kasha's paternal half brother, back in the years between 2001 and 2004 he placed requests for information about his missing father on the internet. He had given up finding anything in 2004. He stopped looking because sometimes life takes you different places and then 8 years later I found his messages linked to their fathers name in the Google cache logs.
Those of you who know me know that I have certain talents that have served me well on the information highways, so after a bit of looking we found an email address, which led to a contact, which led to a Skype call this afternoon.

It turns out that distance isn't much of a thing these days. Kasha's brother lives in Pennsylvania. He has a wife and daughters, she has a brother, not just that, she has a  sister in law and nieces. She also has another sister in law and nieces in Canada.

I am sort of wondering what is going on in her head at the moment. She has never had significant people, never had anyone to share anything with, never had the touch of family or the joy of siblings that so many of us take for granted. I love my sister, I love her in a way that is without words or meaning, and over the last few hours I have have seen a change in my girlfriend as she realises that there are people in the world who won't go away if she offends them, there is a tie of blood. She has the joy of family, and she is trying to learn everyones names. Studying, learning, looking at facebook with a different kind of wonder.

I like it.
It's a small world.

Water Water...

Yes, I know that Garrigill is in Cumbria, a county famous for being the place that has lots and lots of rain. Loads of rain, in fact so much rain that the whole place has been designed by nature to drain water away.
The whole of the UK seems to be having problems with water and floods at the moment. Buildings are having foundations washed away, cities are being cut off and people are having to deal with waterlogged property. There seems to be a definite change in weather patterns regarding rainfall in this country, but Cumbria has been rained on for years, and Garrigill may be in the bottom of a valley, but water just runs through and drains away.
We have had a huge amount of rainfall the last few days and the South Tyne which runs through was very high.There is plenty of space for filling and for overflow so we don't worry about the river, we get more damage from water that flows down the hillsides and across roads before it gets into the river. Traveling back from work on Thursday, there were times when I thought I may have been better off with a hovercraft or a rowboat. It's quite a thing driving through water as it forms a little raging river that flows across the road.

The water really stirs things up down by the river and we like to take a walk down afterwards to see what has been washed down.
Because this is old mining area there is always weird stuff ending up on the river bank and because of the geology around here we find some really lovely stuff.
This morning while we were out a small clear glint caught my eye in the rocks, and when I pulled it out from under the pebbles a huge lump of formed smokey quartz crystal appeared.
I like crystals, I look for interesting things. I have always had my nose downward looking for things on the beach, in woodlands on riverbanks, looking...always looking but this is a special one.
Never found one this size before.
Time to find space on the shelf

It's A Sign!

THE GEORGE AND DRAGON INN

To avoid disturbing our

guests would coachmen and

ostlers kindly refrain

from saddling and

harnessing before

sunrise

G.EYRE - LANDLORD

January 1853

This sign is tacked into one of the old fire surrounds in the George and Dragon. It was made in the day when making a sign was also done by a craftsman and a sign like this will last hundreds of years. That must have been known to Mr Eyre when he put his name to it.

Everything is so temporary these days. Communication like this today would have been ran through a printer onto a piece of paper or card and then laminated and blu-tacked to a wall. Technology may be wonderful but we have lost our style and what we make today will not be here in 200 years. Thats quite a sad thing, and it makes me wonder about what we leave behind. 

I don't have a clue who G. Eyre was, but next time I'm in I may raise a glass in the direction of his name, the man had style....and trouble with noisy ostlers, damn them and their rattling...

What Time Is It?

To be more specific, what time of year is it?
We were out walking up Cross Fell this weekend and while there may be a chill in the air that tells us it isn't the height of summer (also no insects tells us that). And it may be that the trees are semi naked as they move around dropping leaves on us . . but winter?! You can't really tell from this picture. 

I may trudge up there when we have snow so that you can see the difference.

Paint The Sky With Fire

Garrigill is well known for it's firework display, the wonderful gentlemen from Dragonfire fireworks (www.dragonfire.co.uk) did themselves proud again last night.
The village filled with cars as people drove in to see and then even more drive in and park on the incoming roads on each side of the valley to watch from a distance. But the best position is to actually be underneath it in the field, and for just a few pounds (all money collected goes to Garrigill village hall) then that has to be the place to stand.
Dragonfire obviously design this show for those that are in the field and their technical brilliance really shines through. Long distance crossovers, fireworks rising and falling only to re-ignite and rise again, sculptures of fire and then the finale of night turning into a day above your head, the dark sky lit by a fire of colours dancing in synchronicity, fire falling to earth to touch the grass just a few meters in front of you and each boom exploding across the valley and echoing back and forth until it fades away.

The display doesn't last a long time, but the effect leaves you breathless. This was my first Garrigill firework display, but it was by far the best display I have ever been to see, and for such a small village, wow, what an amazing event.

If you come to see it pay the few pounds and come stand in the field, you won't regret it.

Keeping tabs on

I spent most of yesterday making arrows because I had been talking to Dougal in the George & Dragon earlier this week and mentioned my archery interest and somewhere along the line I offered to loan him my bows so that he could have a go.
Problems....always problems.....

The last time my bows were out the bag it was for my son and his friend and between them they destroyed most of the arrows, so a promise to Dougal meant producing some more of the damn things.
I have everything that is needed to churn arrows out by the dozen and so I knocked some out in a few hours and got everything down to Dougals house by early afternoon. He seemed quite pleased and we will see how he gets on. I would imagine the arrows I left wont last long, it's a thing with new archers that they go through a few arrows :-)

It's been a good week, started well with a catch up with some friends from Canada and then a few days holiday which gave me a very short working week.
I get Kieran back for my week soon and I always enjoy my time with him. I'm looking forward to next weekend which is the late Garrigill fireworks display, a damn fine display for such a small village and so the three of us will be at that next weekend.

I have also been wondering about getting involved in some of the craft fairs that are always on in these rural areas. I know that there probably isn't much of a market for longbows and arrows, but people are always interested in how they are made and perhaps if Kasha and I shared a stall she could do some of her stuff and I could do some of mine. It might be fun.

Meanwhile we can still see the grass as we walk the hounds so I guess the hardest part of winter isn't here yet. I am wondering if Northgate will put snow tyres on my company car....maybe I should ask them?

Darker Earlier

With the change in the clocks and the dark early evenings it feels like you don't have the time to see what is around you anymore. There is no daylight by the time I get home now and because of that I don't get to walk the dogs down by the river every day which I miss. Yeah, I have days off, but it was nice getting back in the summer and being able to go out for a little time with the pack.

We were talking yesterday about the change in the seasons, there was a biting rain, small drops but so cold that they stung the face and hands and left your ears wondering if you had just dipped them in the North sea.
We know that it's Autumn because we have branches instead of trees and the air attacks us with freezy droplets. It's different earlier in the year when we have full trees and the air attacks us with insects. We are now waiting to be unable to see any kind of tree at all through the dense fog while the air pounds us with hail. Looking forward to spring and the more gentle snowfall that will cut us off from the outside world because you can't get up the hill to get out of the valley.

Yeah.... I wouldn't want to be anywhere else....wheres my snow shovel....

Stolen!

Kieran was back with us for about ten minutes when he decided that my new guitar just had to be played.
He opened his birthday presents and then got his hands straight onto my birthday pressy

I hope that I can get it back at some point so that I can try to catch up with him, yeah....he plays a lot better than I do.

It's nice having a 15 year old, his humour has developed into a nearly adult style and his adult personality is starting to show through.
I know everyone is proud of their own but he is so nice, he is the nice popular one. He is everything that I would have wanted to be at that age, in fact he is so cool that he helps my street cred :-)

Yep! That went well.....

 Went to the North East Guitar show yesterday where Kasha and I watched my friend Anth Purdey playing his unique style of Swing Jazz to an audience of people who thought they knew how to play the guitar.
I have known Anth for a few years now and it is great to see his rise in popularity and to have been one of the people who 'heard it first'
Being unique in music is such a rare thing, there is just so much of the same these days and it is so good to listen to something different, to hear it live and to know that there are no effects, no dubs, nothing but a man and a guitar.

There are often music nights at the George and Dragon in Garrigill, and there is some real talent in the village, Patrick in particular is someone that I would make a special trip to listen to if I heard he was playing. 
Ok....when I say a special trip...I have to walk about 30 meters, but you know what I mean, I would go even if it were raining :-)

Many years ago I used to sing in a band, we did ok and I have been practicing lately to get the voice back. I recently started to learn to play guitar as it was on my list of 'things I really want to do' and I am at the stage now where after my plinking on the cheap acoustic it is time to move onto a better guitar and so as we were at the show and as my 50th birthday is coming up my lovely girlfriend splashed out on a Telecaster for me. 
This means that there may be duet sounds coming from the cottage as we both practice together and you never know, if we get good enough we may appear at the George one evening ready to play.

 
I like the George and Dragon, it has a proper country pub feeling, two crackling fires blasting out heat, a stone floor that has been there since the 16th century, friendly people who know each other through no more than 2 degrees of seperation and Dixies dog Deisel who is just about the friendliest most playful fella you ever met. Yes, he is allowed on the seats and if you don't like that idea you can go to another pub in the village.
Good luck finding one!

Or Maybe Not!

 Friday we had snow, winter was on it's way and yet the very next day you couldn't have got further away from the possibility of snow!

For those of you that don't know already, Garrigill is on the Pennine Way. This is why we get so many people wearing bright hats, large boots and wearing waterproof maps around the neck. It is also on the cross country cycle way and this is why we get a lot of men wearing tights.
One of these is more disturbing than the other, but after a while you start to get used to various coloured baggy or skintight clothes wandering past your living room window in the rain.
However, we didn't have rain (unusual for Cumbria) and after the first of the snow the weather decided to have a warm up and so Kasha and I decided to walk the dogs on the Pennine Way path between Garrigill and Alston.

Because Kasha is an artist there is always a camera in her pocket so that she can get reference shots and as Autumn is starting to move on us the trees were putting on quite a show of colour not just for our benefit but also for those that walked past in large boots and bright hats.
It was one of those days when everyone said "Hello" or wanted a little chat. It's nice when that happens. Friday it was snowing, and cold and I was in the Arse End of Nowhere. Saturday, the sun was shining and I couldn't be in a more beautiful place.

Shhhhhh!

The very first snow fell today, it drifted very gently and silently down and then decided not to settle.

I saw the best of it as I was heading to the barn to get some logs for the fire. It patterned the torchlight in front of me and faded away as it hit the earth.

The first snow fell today, winter is coming.

Those Fallen Leaves.....

...drift past my windscreen....

Autumn is lovely, but I have already discovered that the amount of leaves falling from trees around here tends to make the roads a bit like a soggy skating rink. Even more fun when it's dark, misty, raining....

There are plenty of long drops, hills to tumble down and tight corners so I guess I should be pleased that it isn't blowing a gale. Hmmm, Cumbria, perhaps if I wait around for a few minutes.

Green

There are not enough village greens anymore!
I didn't really realise how important a village green was for a while because I always lived in places that didn't have one, but now that I live in a place that does it just jumps out as a social centre.
Garrigill has been around since the 12th century when it was Gerards Gill, or Gerards Valley (Gill is Norse for steep sided valley). So I guess that someone called Gerard once owned the place.
The village green is around what used to be the old blacksmith, and I guess as the blacksmith was quite a focal point that it stands to reason that the pub, the church and a lot of old barns are now very close. 

It's easy to point out a village green as being in the centre of an old village, but Garrigill is so small that it is within a few minutes of every property.

One of the old water pumps is still on the green in the place where the well that served the forge used to stand. That pump no longer works, it would be nice to get it working again one day, I might make that a project.
There is another water pump still operating on the bridge out of the village. If you go past give it a blast, but stand back as there is water pressure and lots of it.
 

Got Wood

Last week Dave the blacksmith showed Kasha and myself the river up behind the falls at Thortergill forge.

They used to open the blacksmiths to the public and operate a tea room. They also used to open the walk behind the falls to visitors which was nice of Dave's family as it is all private land, but since the cafe has closed nobody except family and friends go up there.

When we were there last week a few recently fallen Silver Birch caught my eye because of the long straight trunks that would be perfect for longbows so I had arranged with Dave that I would be back with an aptly named bow-saw to chop some and get them laid down ready for the spring when they will be dry enough to work on.

The walk up behind the falls is amazing, and I have already arranged that I can take Kieran up there when he is next over here. He loves going to the forge anyway, I think he already has it in his head to be Daves apprentice at some point.

Kasha took some pictures as I collected the first few pieces, it's heavy stuff is wood so I will go back and get more at another time. I like to create the longbows, but I also think it is nice for whoever ends up owning them to have a picture reference of where it actually came from.

Back in the barn I had the usual job of "Oh no! Last time I did this I should have sharpened my tools" and as ever I hadn't so it was tool sharpening time once again. Please notice the safety glasses girls and boys.

I like working in the barn. Ok, it may be a bit chilly at times but there is a stove in there that I could use to warm the place up if I wanted.
Thing is when you are in the barn you are usually doing the kind of thing that warms you anyway so usually there isn't any point in getting the stove cleaned out (yeah....I should have done that after last time) and all lit up.
This time was not an exception. The day was a bit cool but I was about to start splitting trunks ready to dry them out so I guessed that I wasn't going to be needing the warmth of a log fired stove behind me.

 I have learned through various tries and by talking to other bowyers that it is best for a longbow if the wood splits along it's own natural path as this seems to help with the strength and flexibility of the finished bow.

For that reason I prefer to split the trunks with a metal splitter, where possible breaking through any knots that seem to be in the path of the split.

There are times when this goes well, like it did today and after a few minutes of heavy hammering the trunk found it's very own path and before you know it you have two pieces of wood that you have to leave alone for 3 months before you can touch them again.

It's all great fun!

So, we can come back to this early in the new year when the wood can start to be worked into it's new form.
It's a Birch so it will need a bit of Oak laminated onto the belly to make it strong enough to be a longbow but I'm sure that living in Garrigill a bit of Oak won't be very hard to come across. Even easier when you happen to know the local tree surgeon, but I think I mentioned once before, only two degrees of separation around here, so even if I didn't know him, I would imagine that I would know someone who did.

Right now, the world is just right. I have wood laid down for bows, I have just had word that I have my son on Christmas day, nothing went wrong that I had to run into work this weekend, Kasha is painting (which means Kasha is very happy).
This is all going far to well, are you sure this is my life?

Sissy

Sissy is the sixth member of our family, a black Land Rover Defender that Kasha has had since 2004.
When you live out here a Land Rover or something similar is very much a requirement because eventually there will be snow or water or mud and at those times my Ford Focus just won't get up the hill.

We are all very attached to Sissy, she is uncomfortable, has no heating to speak of, she rattles and bounces on every bump, she is loud and clunky and full of character and she uses lots of diesel.

 But the thing is, she is great fun to be in, she scoots around the country roads she always starts, she goes anywhere in any weather and she does it pretty fast.
Kasha loves her car and unlike the string of company cars that I have we all get attached to Sissy, she is the car that we pat as we get in or get out just to let her know that she is appreciated, valued, loved.

The thing that I like best is that when we are in Sissy we can see over the  walls and admire the view.

In the Ford we miss most of the views, but in Sissy you get to see everything, and everything here is so worth seeing.
My favorites are the drive out of Garrigill and the drive back in.

It's getting frosty here in the mornings already, there will come a point soon where the snow starts to fall and when that happens we will find that as well as having no mobile signal (not on any network) we will probably also have no electricity. When that happens we will have Sissy who will get us out and back in so that we can keep ourselves in fuel for the generator, coal for the fire and whatever tins of food there are left at the shop (actually, we stockpile fuel and tins before winter just in case) but we will have Sissy, and she won't ever let us down. That's why she gets a pat and a rub every time we use her, or a smile every time we see her. She's our girl :-)