Author: Sadie

To Landscape, or not to Landscape, that is the question?

As you may imagine, finding the trousers that I left that pesky cheque for 4 Million pounds in, is proving a little illusive, so each year Charlie and I have to make serious choices as to where money gets invested around Dunans Castle estate.

Two years ago we hit a wall of water, almost literally, when a section of the ravine and the paths we had lovingly created to give our member’s access, were washed away, over a warm, wet summer, monsoon like conditions produced an intense and relentless volume of water. Over our decade plus, as custodians of this beautiful landscape, we really have seen increasingly extreme weather conditions, which mostly boil down to big and prolonged rains, warmer winters and bigger winds, the impact on this ancient landscape is in a word, devastating.

The rains make the grounds softer, washing away huge chunks of land and top soil, causing both soil and newly made mud to constantly move about, clogging up drains and ditches, and placing unwanted pressure on an extremely sensitive landscape, including undermining the massive man-made flat platform, that the Castle sits on.

For the last couple of years, weather conditions have forced planning and landscape consolidation to become an absolute priority, as the ground beneath our feet is quite literally, and slowly shifting. However to mimic the late, glorious Frankie Howard, ‘Panic ye not’, there is a plan.

Last year we created an area of boulevard parking along the edge of our driveway, allowing visitors to get out of their cars without sinking knee deep into mud and, more importantly, controlling the impact that vehicles have on the site. By creating a supported, well-drained space, that cars can drive to without creating more muddy trenches or crushing fragile drainage systems. We also have begun an extensive programme of ditching, dyking and clearing, creating area’s of natural hedging, improving and recovering banking, and the really big one, removing huge swaths of the massive invasive Victorian Rhododendron that has for over 200 years, dominated the landscape. Lovely when managed, a nightmare when wild.

When we first arrived here the place literally looked like ‘Sleeping Beauties Castle’, all knotty undergrowth and mad trees, with derelict turrets peeking out from the gloom. Restoring, and recovering this once immaculate, designed landscape is a painstaking and necessary task and there is so much more that must be done before the Castle can move forward, which as ever takes time and resources, saying all that, we are really looking forward to opening for our 2017 season to show off our progress.

For those members who want to see the Castle move forward, do believe me, hand in heart and shovel in wheelbarrow, so do we. The sooner we can whip that building into some kind of usable shape, the sooner we can make the site actually start to earn its keep, to become viable on its own, to really live again. Rather than exist as the huge, love-hate money pit that dominates, pretty much everything that we do. The short truth is that if we do not continue to improve and invest in the land around the building, then the building will become unstable and we cant have that, can we? So doggedly each year our team, including, Granny, Grandma and the children, plod on. Every blessed sunny day, out we go, to chop, strim, plant, clear, dig, blah, blah, blah…

I am delighted to report that over the last few weeks with the help of our Grounds man Stuart and Graham Togwell of Graham’s Gardens, we have at last, with our Lairds and Ladies generous support started the rescue of the HaHa, which sits as the base support around the site of the Castle.

Pictures attached, where you can see the bowing of the stonework, where it bulges, which is a tad alarming, but what is wonderful, is we can at last see the stonework and save it. Vast amounts of Bracken root-balls have been painstakingly evicted from between the stone (without the aid of chemical compounds, naturally) and repairs are underway and if you visit us this year you can walk along and admire, or just think, ‘isn’t that supporting wall lovely’, as one does! Bartie, our Castle Hound models the space beautifully. It will make for a lovely walk, so do come and enjoy!

Excellent Local Landscaper: www.grahams-gardens.co.uk

Useful Article on the origens of the HaHa: http://www.oxoniangardener.co.uk/ha-ha-confused-laughter-31/

 

 

‘Hedgerow Syrup’ battles The Cold!

So why is ‘mum’ always the last woman standing? At last I admit defeat, finally felled  by the lurgy that has worked its wicked way through the family over the last 3 torrid weeks. In a grumpy, yet messy domestic drama ‘The Cold’!
First there was ‘Snotty Daddy’, stoic and insistent he was ‘fine’, until he crumbled and admitted he was feeling ‘rough’ managing to force himself to swallow a whole Paracetamol, something our hero only ever does when driven to desperate measures. He eventually won the battle after days of struggling through, and celebrated with a shave. Next came the teenage angst admirably delivered by Heroic H, who womanfully battled Biology and Physics tests, as well as choosing her Highers, making life changing decisions whilst wading through a loo roll mountain.
Kept sane by lots of TLC, no nagging, ‘because she was poorly’ and her best pal, ‘The Headphones’ and regularly dosed with mummy’s proven cold killer the ‘Hedgerow Syrup’.  A cheeky little oxymel concoction, developed using grandmothers WWII recipe for storing hedgerow goodness, during the austerity years and capturing all the vitamins in a tasty if a little odd, tea like drink. This ‘love it or hate it’ potion, has kept both my daughter’s fighting fight and is a sure-fire way to bring pep and comfort when feeling blue. So H imbibed and managed to expel her bugs with aplomb. 
Then disaster struck,  sunny, runny nosed glorious Little G, was at last captured by the germs, no matter how hard she tried to dance out of their way and insist all was well, the inevitable occurred. Late hot nights, chesty coughs and sleeplessness, did not deter her from cross-country racing, piles of home-work and re-plotting her bedroom! Lots of mummy’s ‘Hedgerow Syrup’, cuddles and a movie outing restored her to normality. A few days tickled by, all was well on the Dixon-Spain front. We ladies were packed and heading home for half term, with plans of jaunts out, maybe a night or two away and even a plan to get Daddy to join us for an outing, it all started off so beautifully, lovely friends Zoe and Martin and Mac their ‘very blond’ Retriever came to stay, great food (thank you Zoe) and even better company and our holiday began. Then WHAM, yesterday I finally, succumbed, felled by the dread cold, which had been clearly lurking hidden, in some dark place, plotting for a week and waiting to pounce. Well that’s me folks, feeling well sorry for myself, and boy can I just say it’s horrid! At least today I am vertical and can cope with the glare of a computer screen an opportunity to get working on this blog.  Hedgerow drink in hand, I can at last feel air through the snot and I am just about able to breathe with my lips closed.  Tomorrow, I know I will feel much better. For those of you that like a good forage, here is the recipe. 

(Mummy’s) Hedgerow Syrup

  • Ingredients
    500g (big bowl) of red fruit: Black currants/brambles/wild raspberry’s/strawberry etc: You dont need forage, you can simply buy what you like or forage in season and store:
  • 150 fluid oz Cider Vinegar
  • 500g sugar or 200g stevia (if low sugar option is preferred)
  • 1- 2 jars of Honey depending on thickness and taste
  • Water

Method
1. Place fruit in a bowl or Tupperware tub and cover with Cider Vinegar, cover and leave to steep for 2 days. This process allows the vinegar to absorb all the nutrients and goodness from the fruit. This process is called ‘Oxymel’
2. Add the whole mix to a thick bottomed pan, add the sugar, the honey and 2 x the container you used for the fruit, full of water. Gently simmer until all the sugar and honey is dissolved.
3. Continue to simmer gently for about 15 minutes, adding honey and or water to get a consistency you like. Try not to let the mixture boil.
4. When happy with consistency remove from the heat and set aside to cool
5. Prepare your glass storage bottles. I find empty whisky bottles ideal and I save any good glass containers.  For Syrup you want to store longer, use tinted glass bottles as tinted glass helps protect from light. Or store in a cool dark place.
6. Strain your Syrup mixture into the bottles, removing the bits of fruit*. Use a .small sieve or ideally muslin cloth, depending on how clear you like your mixture. Store in a cool dark place. Bottles can last for up to a year.

*Top tip, your fruit remains can be frozen and go an absolute treat when added to a fruit crumble or pie, adding zest.

 To Serve Your syrup is best diluted, add a few inches to a mug and poor on hot water. You can also serve cold with ice and spring/fizzy water.

Notes: This is an old-fashioned recipe, designed to get the goodness from fruit in season and preserve into the winter months. The Cider Vinegar is both a preservative, capturing the goodness of the fruit and retaining those qualities during the heat process. Vinegar has many medicinal properties, working directly on the ears, nose and throat. As an actor, I have many times recourse to cider vinegar to cure hoarseness or to give me a welcome pep, if feeling run down. Honey has antibacterial properties and again acts as a preserving agent.
Red berries are all good for your heart and packed with antioxidants like lycopene and anthocyanins.
 My recipe is adapted to our taste, experiment to get it right for you. You should get a smooth sweet sour mix, with the vinegar gently underpinning the syrup. Play about with the ingredients and enjoy. Our girls grew up on this ‘Hedgerow Syrup’ and as wee ones, used to come foraging with mummy around the grounds of the castle, picking what ever fruit we could find and what didn’t get eaten or made into puddings, was made into our comforting winter tonic.  Drink and enjoy. I do hope you like this

January Months at the Castle

The winter months in 21st Century Scotland can be surprisingly harsh. As the temperatures plummet we often lose our water. The house is on a private supply so the pipes freeze with the ground, and waiting for the thaw can often be a test of endurance, 8 weeks was the longest in the Winter of 2011, never to be forgotten. Long grubby days etched in our minds. Out of sheer desperation, we were forced to take up family membership of a Spa in Inveraray. So that winter, the girls learnt to swim, my skin never felt so soft and my car devalued rapidly with the 60 mile a day round trips.

Electricity is equally tenuous. In our decade here at Dunans Castle, we have spent weeks living by candle light and boiling water harvested with a pick axe from the burn.  We now have a small generator that can power a couple of computers and keep the basic day to day functions going, but some of our early experiences were a challenge.  I have many memories of huddling around the wood burning stove in our red shed, a tumble of children, dogs and he and me, bickering about who would brave the freezing cold air out-with our human duvet cocoon to grab a snack or a glass of ‘milky’, of the benumbed nights when I would wake in the wee hours for a baby feed, or a pee and lie in horror as my body registered the toe shriveling cold.

Another general challenge was day to day shopping.  One guest, husband of a friend, upon being forced by his wife to leave the comfort of his city existence for a long weekend in rural Scotland, asked me, somewhat hesitantly if I had a ‘thing’ about toilet roll. Startled, I replied no! Although I had not previously considered the matter, I had rather assumed my relationship with said domestic sundry, was normal. After a considered pause, he nodded thoughtfully and remarked it was just that he had never stayed in a house where there was so much, toilet roll in evidence, in bulk in fact!

He was quite right. In the downstairs loo, sits a huge old Jardinière that once belonged to my great grandmother, Lilly Lynn, a formidable matriarch, headmistress of a rural school, painter, tailor and all round ‘can do’ lady, the sort of Gal, who upon spotting the first ever ‘fitted kitchen’ in a ladies periodical, set about to build herself her very own version, which was so well built it outlived her inimitable spirit.

Said pottery inheritance was indeed full of toilet roll and sits to this day, usefully, in state, in the downstairs loo, full of loo roll!  In the guest shower room was a similar arrangement and again in the upstairs loo. So yes, on reflection, our guest did make a good point, we were well provided for on the toilet roll front, however, as I put to him, this was more about forward planning than an odd bottom fetish on my part!

Consider, says I, its 9pm on Sunday evening and you pop to the loo to discover no loo roll – eek, no late night garage, no minimart up the road, not even a 24/7 supermarket within an hours drive, bum! Quite literally, nothing open until Monday morning and even then a 1 and a half hour round trip!  Life at Dunans is all about forward and behind planning!

Running a household and ensuring everyone including our sundry animals are looked after takes a level of military planning, especially when the children were small, I now have a brain that shops in bulk, I can whip off a basic bi monthly shop in a snap, however when in Glasgow confronted with a ‘metro express mini-market’ option, small items, individually wrapped, in pack of 1 or 2 or in the case of cucumbers, a half, (what is that about)? I am often at a complete loss.

What I do love about living at Dunans are the local businesses that have become a welcome part of our lives, providing food and goods and taking the day to day pressure off. As of yet no-one runs a loo roll delivery company, however we get Robert from Fynest Fish, once a week, Bob, from 3K who delivers pet sundries once a month and a whole heap of local delivery companies who keep us ticking along, without constant recourse to the great gods, like Tesco and sundry other world dominating purveyors of food.

I also am proud that our rural life means we are really, really in contact with our food sources and seasons. My youngest daughter will happily pluck a pheasant and both kids know what the meat and fish they eat actually looks like from the beast it once was. Admittedly we are not well set to grow our own, despite my feeble attempts, rain, deer, rain and more rain, oft kills what we do grow, but we do buy locally grown when we can and we also have some great local, ethically sourced meat/dairy suppliers, so its win, win all the way.

Our Local suppliers – Support local: Buy Local: Create Sustainable Community living: Real Food

http://www.lismoregrassfedbeefandlamb.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/pg/Fynestfish/about/?ref=page_internal
http://www.goruralscotland.com/auchentullich
http://www.winstonchurchillvenison.com/foods-from-argyll/
http://dalmally.cylex-uk.co.uk/company/3k-supplies-17110739.html

How It all Began and how Dunans Castle found us!

Charlie and I lived and worked in London as a newly wed married couple, we explored the delights of being young and free in the great sprawling capital. Nights out, drinks parties, long walks in Richmond Park, packs of darling joyous friends. He and I lived, worked and loved our time together. Our shared practical passion was for the most part all about property. Bouncing from 1 modest flat conversion we moved onwards and upwards, living amidst plaster dust, feasting on late night takeaways and sleeping on blow-up mattresses. No job too small or too big, we were game on for it all.
Eventually we were living resplendently in our West London town house, life was tremendous, I was Acting, writing and designing, doing a bit of telly, going on tour, whilst he was publishing, building websites and learning computer programming. Then one day we discovered we were going to have a baby. I will never forget the feeling, the joy, the love and the overwhelming sense of something so momentous that had captured us both, we began to make those nebulous plans that hopeful parents do.
Then one bleak sunday morning, Charlie had nipped out for croissants and a paper, whilst I dozed in our beautiful sun filled bedroom, it all went terribly wrong. The next few hours, days are in all honesty still a blur, a dim but never forgotten memory always underpinned by a deeply rooted feeling of loss and pain. I had miscarried and our first baby was not to be.
For any couple who have experienced such a loss, my heartfelt blessings to you. Those unborn souls do stay with us, they are part of our journey always.
So for Charlie and I, this experience quite literally stopped us in our tracks, we decided we really did want a family, wanted to try for another baby and most of all we wanted to create a home, not in London, some where we could be grounded and with space about us, somewhere free and open and fresh. Both children of rural country upbringings, this felt right.
Next we went to visit my mother on the Isle of Arran, to share our sad news and recover. On the way off the island, travelling to visit Charlie’s father and stepmother on Lismore, we drove through a Glen, by the name of Glendaruel and at the top end of a long, long road, we spotted a ‘For Sale’ sign. Ever intrepid, we tipped down the drive and took in our first sight of the ruined Dunans Castle.
In awe, we stood on the bridge and gazed at the huge sad shell of a house. I held Charlie’s hand and looked into his bright clear eyes, shining, as ever with adventure and I knew our lives had just changed significantly, forever.
(The photo of me standing on the bridge was taken on the day we discovered Dunans). Note the high heels!
Footnote:
 For help and support and to understand about miscarriage contact:
http://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk
Do speak out and share your experience, it happens to so many women and we should find the space to express our thoughts and feelings to help others, ourselves, and future generations, to move forward, to connect and heal.

2017 weather warning with force

A wild night of winds kept the entire Castle household awake last night, as storms ruthlessly began to batter Scotland. As I write, some 24 hours later the relentless rain and wild winds continue to roar exultantly about us.

Huddled by the well fed wood burning stove for comfort, myself, the elderly Basset and 2 listless cats settle in for the night, as our ‘all weather concerto’ plays on, enhanced by the percussion of sundry outdoor accoutrements flying about, roof slates, tree’s, girls trampoline and a motley collection of long suffering garden furniture.

Who knows what the morning will bring, until then we shall enjoy the warmth and give thanks that the power is still on, according to the news, much of central Scotland is without, to blessed are we. My family are in Glasgow tonight, safe and warm and much missed.

As I type, I am minded of one early New Year in our ‘Red Shed’ life, with two small delighted giggly girls as we prepared to head down to the local Ceilidh in the village hall, mid bath, suddenly ‘the lights went out’.

Below is my account of that night, a testament to the way we lived then and now and the enormity of the environment that hosts our lives.

While you read, I am consigning myself to on-line shopping and ticking off a long to-do list and hopefully an early restful bed.

The end of the week we are expecting snow, much more fun, let hope my teens are not too grown up not to humour their mother for a spot of snow fun.
THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT

All over Cowal residents prepared to see the bells in, frocks and shirts hung ready, party food was prepared, halls decked out and swept and bands warmed up in anticipation for the big night of the year. In our house a huge bubble bath was drawn ready for small girls to clean up and don dresses, when suddenly ‘bang’ the lights went out. A fairly regular event for us, especially if there is what the Hydro Call Centre refer to as ‘weather’ going on or if one of our long-suffering neighbours goes mad and has more than one ‘power’ shower a day!

Undeterred we dug out the camping stove and had our tea by candle light, although the sharp drop in temperature was hard to ignore as the heating went off, party dresses fast disappearing under jumpers, fleeces and finally duvets. Across Cowal candles blazed and generators were set up by a resourceful few to get the parties going. For Glendaruel and Colintraive the two halls saw the new year in, in style with everyone on the dance floor to keep warm.

At its peak the power was off for over 26,000 homes across Scotland. By the 2nd of January 900 homes were still without power, including a large number of houses in Colintraive,

As Storms battered their way across the peninsula, SEPA issued flood warnings. Rainfall in Argyll, over the festive season reached 55 millimetres and wind speeds of up to 70 miles per hour were recorded. Temperatures for the time of year are comparatively mild although snow on the hills may herald the long looked for frosts. Whatever the weather this new year, we will be keeping our fingers crossed that we don’t loose essential services and that repairs made by service providers now are durable, up to date and able to sustain communities in 21st-century Cowal