Week Sixty-two

Week beginning 7th August 2023

Another week begins but it’s going to be a bit different as we are expecting our son, Eddie, and our grandchildren, Niven and Caitlin, to visit for a few days and at the end of the week Pete’s former colleague, Alex.

Pete is going to work a half day today, a half day tomorrow and take Wednesday as a toil day so that he can spend time with the family.

While Pete gets on with his job Molly is doing a bit more of the plasterboarding to finish the east gable wall.

After a quick lunch we are on our way to Oban to get supplies and go for a shower and a swim.

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This morning while Pete works, Molly is preparing the mega-shed for our visitors by tidying and doing a washing.

We have finished preparing for our visitors and are having a bit of lunch, they have been held up by roadworks so won’t be here until early afternoon. We’ll not be working on the house during the visit so we can fully enjoy their visit but we are expecting the scaffolding to come down and the electrics in the shed to be finished.

We are going to the river because Niven and Caitlin want to practice stone skimming and collecting some especially nice pebbles. On the way back we are going to go and introduce them to one of the local kids that we met recently.

The kids seem to have hit it off so they are having fun together and we can leave them to get on with it.

We are back down at the river after our dinner but at a different location where there is a far bigger pebble beach.

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After a late start and a slow breakfast we are heading back to the river for more stone skimming, throwing and collecting, this is a favoured activity it seems.

We had intended to go swimming this afternoon but Caitlin says she would prefer to go canoeing so Pete is going to take them out on Loch Awe and Molly and Eddie are going to Oban after helping launch the canoe.

We are back now and the kids are so excited about their canoeing adventure. After a bit of canoeing on the loch they paddled up the River Orchy which involved going up some shallow but fast flowing water which made the way back really quite a thrill.

We’ve had dinner and are gathered around a fire in our brazier so it’s time to toast some marsh mallows. Before bed we play some board games. We’ve had a lovely day.

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Pete has to work today so Molly, Eddie, Niven and Caitlin are going to take the Ben Cruachan powerstation tour then are heading to Oban for lunch and a visit to Ganavan sands.

Neither of our expected contractors have turned up again so it isn’t looking too promising for progress this week.

We’ve had dinner and we are having a walk into Glen Strae, Pete has been desk bound most of the day and wants to stretch his legs.

Even though it’s warm and humid, amazingly, there are no midges. There are some tiny frogs on the track and further down the local gamekeeper is herding some pheasants back into the forest to protect them from foxes. He has two Wieners (Dachshunds) doing the work. At first it’s not clear what’s happeing but now that we can see the birds and the dogs it all makes sense.

Back at the caravan after a lovely walk for a bit of Wavelength game playing before bed.

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It’s Friday morning and the family will be heading off after an early lunch. They are off to do some more stone skimming while we do some tidying and reorganising.

Alex has been in touch and he can’t make it after all so once the family have gone it’ll just be the two of us again.

Now that everyone has gone after such an lovely visit we are getting on with a few wee tasks. pete is reorganising the mega-shed because we are going to have to store all the stuff for the bathrooms in here and Molly is working on incorporating some red pallet wood into the spice rack shelves we are building into the kitchen wall.

We are working together to do a bit of pallet dismantling so that the wood can dry out before making into shelves.

That’s another week over and it’s been fun even though there has been little progress, the contractors never showed up in the end. We feel a bit more rested after last week’s extremely tiring efforts so we can hopefully get back into the swing again next week.

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