Without wanting to publicise being away from home before we took our recent trip, a holiday has been planned for a little while. It feels like an age since we have left the four walls we live in; which is, of course, simply not true. But with our dual existence of renting here in Cardross and working hard to renovate in Gigha we thought some rest and relaxation was deserved.
Before going away I took time to check-in on the window restoration. Where possible we have made the decision to restore rather than replace and use experienced craftsman to do these jobs. The windows from the Manse were take out of their frames earlier this year and are being restored (i.e. rotten wood being replaced) and reglazed (single panes being replaced by double). The expense is not inconsiderable but it fits our brief well.
So then a car journey via Derby to visit some good friends and an overnight stay before pointing the car at Southampton. There we boarded the Celebrity cruise ship Silhouette for a week’s UK staycation. A little strange that we would sail back in the direction we came visiting Liverpool and Belfast, but we were mostly there for the onboard facilities and the all-inclusive food and drink package.
The blog isn’t meant to be one of personal travels, I promise it will be back to renovation by the end, but a little flavour of the holiday in the next photos:
So as soon as we made the journey back to Scotland we immediately took the opportunity to travel back to Gigha. Refreshed and keen to continue, the focus is still on packing up the Cardross house but the draw of being back on the Island again tells us that the decision to move there is right for us.
In our absence, newly made friends have been collecting apples and berries from the garden and we had the chance to do some of this for ourselves earlier this week. The orchard has a plentiful supply although I cant claim the apples are the sweetest I have ever tasted! And as well as fruit picking we had time to paint one side of the shepherd’s hut. We had planned to do more but the weather had other ideas. So I leave it here for the week with the one side we did manage to start on, I hope you agree with our colour scheme?
Middle Age Musings 