#Easdale thePuffer Argyll IslandLife

[kelpieking]

New Year same resolution

I obviously keep my blog going as much as I ever kept my diary. I am quite keen to give this blogging thing a go. So with my time on Easdale now limited I thought what better way than maybe just starting to share what island life is like. 

When I started writing this apparently it was Friday though really days of the week have little meaning apart from purely titles. As I am self-employed, work days are whenever there is work on and with my trying to develop my seaweed company, nearly every day can be a work day. There is a memory, an echo of what weekends are and I am reminded of them because there are occasions when I can enjoy them with my wife, who lives and works in Glasgow and who is coming up by train this evening. Back to today, Friday 26th of January, I am providing crew cover on the Easdale ferry, a 7am start and 11pm finish, it is a fair long day, though not really that trying in the winter. Yes the days may be short on daylight and indeed often wet, windy or cold or a mixture of all three, but when it is sunny, then it is all worth it. Plus there is such thing as a winter timetable, so through-out the day from 10:15, the ferry runs every 30 minutes and from 19:30 again every 30 minutes until 21:00 with a 23:00 available on a Friday and Saturday. The ferry journey is only 5 minutes, depending on the weather of course. The wind direction is key during strong winds and gales. Easdale Sound runs on an almost direct north-south axis (something like 350-170 degrees axis), so anything from the north and especially the north west means the wind blows right down the sound and into the harbour at Ellenabeich where the ferry pulls into. Any westerly winds usually means big swells and these can run through the sound, and with an incoming tide creating wind-over-tide conditions, big waves and rollers with wash through and crash upon the shores and of course into Ellenabeich pier. 

So the winter is the time everyone pays particular attention to the weather forecast. The weather today, well so far living up to forecast: cold, clear, sunny and crisp up until lunchtime (13:00) and then clouding over with the chance of some rain or drizzle. Well the rain did arrive by 19:30 with a south easterly breeze has picking up slightly, probably due to swing to the west over night. It’s been a cool day, not very cold but a distinct chill in the air. Certainly cold enough first thing for a slight frost to hit the island, making some of the grass (and mud) crunch underfoot and any slate on the paths pretty slippy. My cottage is a actually pretty cold, the nature of building regulations for Easdale (a heritage conservation area) seeming to mean houses vary in their degree of heat retention and whether insulation can be put in. Mine doesn’t have such luxury, with no mains gas, there is no central heating just two storage heaters (though one is not working at the moment, I suspect a fuse has blown). At the moment every morning involves lighting the fire. As romantic as fires are, I mean nothing is visually warming to the mind and heart as a roaring fire and of course it literally does warm one up, I don’t think it is something many folk across the UK think about having to do. And to get at least part of the cottage warm, I have to light my fire (or if feeling lazy turn the oven on). The fire has been lit all day and so my living room was duly toasty, then again I am also quite well wrapped up for spending the day out on the ferry. 

For some reason I was a wee bit sleepy all day, luckily my skipper is as fond of coffee as I am so we were operating on freshly ground strong coffee for much of the day. It is a good thing of being on the ferry, one does get time on occasion to do other things between ferry runs. At lunchtime I managed to make bread. I had the option of asking someone who was in town to bring a loaf back (I am about to run out) but figured just as easy to bake some. 

Yes that it is the thing about being on the ferry for a few days, and generally living on an island or any remote place: planning ahead with meals and making do if you have forgotten to pick up something in town. Because Oban is 16 miles up the road, so 32 mile round trips do generally have to encompass more than just getting a pint of milk. 

Back the day, well the island is home to a very healthy population of voles, you can see their wee run routes through the grass. Two of them took up residence in my cottage and despite a few capture and releases, they have come back in. I have narrowed down where they live, in the built in cupboard where the fuse boxes are and the washing machine is. In fact I think they live beneath the washing machine, which sits upon a small pallet. Well of course the previous week it was stormy and snowy and cold, so I couldn’t capture and release them into that now! Realising that actually the reason why they roam around the cottage so much is because they are hungry, I have decided to start some feeding experiments. Currently they are eating between 12g and 14g of bird seed a day, with some indication that they really like sunflower seeds, and given the option of pine nuts, will eat the bird seed first. The reason I decided to start feeding my voles is the night I realised that one was climbing over my bed and ran along the top of my pillow. I could hear them trying to gnaw through something underneath my bed, discovered it was forgotten chocolate in a present bag that had been knocked under the bed and promptly got rid of it. I then put out some bird feed, watched it nibble some then start scrabbling at the bedroom door to get out and back to its mate. The feeding started after that night of little sleep. Since then, no more voley experiences, though I can hear them in the little cupboard. So today I separated out the sunflower seeds within the 16g of bird feed I put out for them, 2g of sunflower seeds and 14g of generic seeds. I predict the sunflower seed will be gone first. 

Friday wasn’t a bad wildlife day I suppose, saw the kestrel hovering over the island and on the otherside, two buzzards soaring above the cliffs overlooking Ellenabeich and the otter was sighted in the sound.

A student arrived in the afternoon, someone who is going to develop on-line registration for the World Stone Skimming Championships, thanks to a successful Interface application by the Stone Skimming committee. The student seems very nice and eager to get working. 

The day closed with having to run up to Oban to collect my wife, Dr B, and an ever stiffening breeze. I did manage to bake some bread and tidy the cottage up a bit, so felt quite productive.

The last ferry was for the darts teams, with the returning Easdale team having been victorious and the departing Oyster team also having been victorious against the second Easdale team.

So this is going up after the weekend which is a bit silly, I might as well make note of what else happened on the island on Saturday.

Saturday the first ferry is at 7:45 so still feels early. The morning started off wet and a wee bit windy. However as the day wore on, the wind picked up in strength and despite the forecast being for cloud, the sun and blue sky did breakthrough. The wind started off from the south and as the day wore on brought in squally heavy showers. Needless to say one of the first things I did after the 7:45 was to light the fire. Dr B had marking to do and so spent the day working through her students dissertations. 

And the wind just slowly increased in speed and with an inevitability swung round to the west, blasting right down Easdale sound. When the tide is on the ebb, generally the sound is calmer when the wind is from the west as it is wind with tide. However, there seemed to be plenty of wave action getting through, so much so we were a bit concerned about when the tide would turn. For this reason Mellon took the web design student off the island and back up to Oban to catch his train. 

I was treated to lunch in the Puffer by Dr B, which was delightful along with a much needed coffee. We discussed aspects of the dissertation she was marking. Young Fin and Laura were in as well, so we were all duly distracted by Fin and reading some of his books, especially the bird one which made noises! Ok Fin is like 15 months old so they are baby books, but very cool books. Now I quite like to take a walk at lunchtime if I am on the ferry just to have a bit of exercise. Of course I never made it all the way round the island, the sound of crashing waves on the back shore meant I ended up just standing and watching, considering the importance of wave action on the distribution of seaweeds on the shoreline and then considering the sea foam and what might be contained within. I scurried back to my cottage (Dr B was still in the Puffer) to grab a petri dish and headed back to the backshore to scoop up some foam. My intention was to have a look at it using my USB microscope, though this did not in the end prove very successful, so I will try again. 

Dr B made a very tasty veg lasagne for tea. By 18:15 (the last ferry before tea) the wind was coming fully from the west and was bringing big gusts making it difficult to get back out of Ellenabeich. By 19:30 it was bad enough for the ferry to be called off. I used the time to prepare for travelling down to London for A Taste of Argyll at the House of Commons that I am partaking in. We did no further ferry runs, for in the dark with unknown ferocious squalls blasting through, it is a risky challenge to take the wee ferry into Ellenabeich and then turn it around to get back to Easdale. It’s not the most manoeuvrable of vessels and the engine has been known to cut out on occasion. So by 21:00 we secured the ferry and called it a night. Dr B and I then went to the Puffer for a cheeky drink (just the one, ok maybe two pints of Aurora by Windswept). Then we called it a night at 10pm. We were both pretty sleepy, though we did squeeze in one episode of Black Mirror before going to bed. 

And that was two days on the island during January, the dark month.