The week of the day trip

This week exemplified the reason we need to move to Gigha completely. Two day trips with a 6am start to finish the shepherd’s hut build are the headline for this week, but they were punctuated by reasons we needed to be elsewhere. Long drives and long working days cannot be sustained so the decision has now been taken to move, lock stock and barrel to Gigha for the winter.

The bits either side and in between don’t make for very interesting reading but in preparation for the move we still need to pack a four bedroom house back into storage and that deserves a brief mention. Karen and I have spent a fair amount of time to condense those items still in storage to the smallest floorplate possible – a real-life implementation of the skills learnt in playing Tetris over the years. Storage is down to this before we now try to sandwich in all the furniture that ultimately needs to come with us.

The first of the two day trips, on Monday, saw us take the build of the shepherd’s hut from the base we had built last week to a structure with walls. I am very grateful that our son is capable of lifting a wall panel on his own as I doubt my aging knees would have benefited from climbing up and down from the platform we had created. The family team of Dan doing the heavy lifting, Karen ensuring the walls were aligned correctly and Andy screwing into place became streamlined as the day went on. Some proof is offered in the two videos posted to Instagram on the oldmansegigha account. For those less familiar with Insta some pictures below:

A satisfactory end to the day before the return trip of 100 miles saw the roof supports in place. It was as much as we had intended, but were desperate to find time to return and put the roof on. This was a sizeable job in itself having to secure 84 tongue and groove boards with over 500 nails. We also knew that getting the roof on afforded some protection to the elements and would allow a tarpaulin to be stretched over the structure to waterproof it to some degree. So return we did on Thursday.

Still finishing needed in various edging pieces to be fitted and steps to be built. Then painting and varnishing before work starts on the interior. That brings with it the problem of power and drainage to name two, but we are pleased with progress to date. The remainder of September is likely to be devoted to packing the rental into storage so that will have to wait.