Tag: Scotland

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dear diary ~ still here, still busy

Scarborough August 2025

Hi there, how are you all? It seems an age since I ventured here…I have almost forgotten how to edit a photo and write a few words.

So sorry to those readers who have been patiently waiting for a new post to appear, I could say that I have no excuse for not writing sooner other than my life is really very far removed from the peaceful retirement DH and I had planned and we find ourselves with no time to spare after fulfilling obligations and appointments. And that is partly true, but there is another reason I have not been able to write recently, one which has been a bit distressing and is the main news of this post.

Beach Cottage 2024

It is with a heavy heart that I can now say that there will be no more stories from our beach cottage in Scotland. Many of you will have followed our adventures when we visited the cottage …all the ups and downs and the drama of the flood in 2014, but as many of you know it had gradually ceased to be our happy place since the little caravan site neighbouring our property was taken over by a young man who had desires from the beginning to drive us out. Within months he had managed to get rid of the people who had been on the caravan site for some years, removing their older caravans at a cost to them and gradually replacing them with expensive new ones sold on to new people at a higher rent. Where there were two or 3 caravans sited just below us he changed this into boat storage instead. As we left he had increased the number of boats and the sea angling competitions he organised to one a month during the season. Some of the villagers are quite annoyed at the extra noise and activity down on the local beach where they launch the boats with a tractor but can do nothing about it. It appears that anyone can run a business using a public beach.

Our cottage and land was his only means to expand his business further into a larger boat storage facility and he tried every type of bullying during the last few years, crudely chopping down our hedge alongside the lane (which earned him the title of machete man), putting a barrier across the lane (our only access which he wanted to keep locked), installing a huge noisier extractor fan on the back of his kitchens only yards from our back garden, blocking the access into our drive with boats and tractors, allowing greasy sewage from his kitchens to spill out of the drain and run down our banking, hiring a bird scarer pointed at our woodland and also putting up security cameras that directly looked over our property. Other than that just generally making a nuisance. Every time we went up on a visit we became more anxious wondering what we would find next.

We had originally bought the cottage with this stunning sea view in 2004 to renovate ready for our retirement but sadly this dream has now come to an end. There were numerous reasons why we really needed to give up the property but safeguarding ourselves from the toll of the mental stress was foremost. After much soul searching we decided there was no point in continuing to deal with this person that made us so unhappy no matter how beautiful a place it was.

There were other factors too…we recognised that my mum might be one of these people that live well past 100 and going to live further away in Scotland would just not work out. She is now 99 and very needy; her memory is getting quite bad and as soon as we have made a visit she forgets and is asking when we will be seeing her next as if we have never been. Presently, we travel for 3 hours (including a short stop) to see her for a couple of hours between the carers visits and wheel her to the nearby park and back and then travel back home for 3 hours. We do this as often as we can, one snag is that she likes us to go on a Sunday so we leave Saturday free to prepare for the trip and then Monday to recover.

With more frequent visits we were finding it difficult to fit in a visit to the cottage and stay for any meaningful length of time. With 3/4 of an acre of garden it needed a lot of attention from us, attention we gladly gave as we have a passion for gardening but not being there often enough it was soon becoming unmanageable. The first and only time we tried to go for 3 weeks we were called back after the first week to help with a family emergency at home. We never tried again! To add to everything the journey up there was more tiring for us even with the hotel break overnight at Carlisle to rest my back.

Everything felt right to let it go but equally everything felt wrong, but in the end we had to let our head rule over our heart this time and reluctantly last May put the cottage up for sale. We made our final visit last October, the caravan site owner, as expected, made an offer for our cottage and land when we put it on the market and we accepted. We had other interested parties, (one of whom came from a neighbouring village here at our Yorkshire home) but in the end our conscience would not let us sell to some unsuspecting person who would think they were buying an idyllic place only to walk into a load of unknown problems in the future. It is probably for the best that the neighbouring caravan site and our cottage and land have been reunited as a whole as they once were at the beginning of last century when it was a Creamery.

We were heartbroken to leave this sleepy little village down on the Mull of Galloway, the place that once seemed like a little piece of paradise. Packing up after 20 long years and finding new homes for all the things we couldn’t bring down home took quite a bit of time. Our static caravan in the garden, which had become our refuge after the flood of the cottage, had to be sold too and a lovely lady purchased it and transported it to sunny Spain. Saying goodbye on the final day to my beautiful garden and the sound of the sea was indescribable and even now tears are very close to the surface all the time…we are both still grieving for a life that was almost within grasp but we couldn’t cling onto any longer in the hope that our circumstances would get any better soon.

And they haven’t….we are as busy now as ever and never on anything that we would ideally choose to do as it has been a year of helping other members of our family. Mum has been increasingly worse…not in health more in her moods and endless complaining. In addition both our daughters decided to move house this year, one moved unexpectedly over Easter and is now more or less settled. The other is presently in the throes of moving. We are decorating and gardening at her new house and providing childcare while they pack up the old one. Hopefully they will be installed before the new school term in a couple of weeks.

We may still go back to Scotland for a holiday, after all it was my husband’s home town, and he has family there. He was born in Stranraer and lived at Castle Kennedy Gardens on the estate for a while with his grandma and grandad (who was head gardener there) so there will always be ties that bind us to this area. We decided not to go this year though, it would still be too emotional for us especially as we heard shortly after leaving that nearly all the trees in our little wood have been chopped down and soon the cottage will be demolished too as the new owner has made a planning application to build a new house on the spot.

So now my journey is on a different course…I am not sure where it is taking me to but when time allows I will be back blogging, leaving a written account of my day to day travels.

We have just returned from our family holiday in Scarborough. We had the best weather, dry hot and sunny. No rainy day amusements for the grandchildren required this year.

And now… this week….. back to the decorating of course and more childcare, oh and a visit to see mum at the weekend.

I do hope you are all having a lovely summer, I do drop in to read your stories when I can and try to catch up with your news, I might even comment occasionally.

Bye for now x

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dear diary ~ homeward bound

We ached too much yesterday morning to go out into the cottage garden even though it was our last chance to clear up, weed, prune or do any other urgent jobs – we had to take the decision to just let it be. 

Instead, as the sun was shining, we went for a short drive over to Castle Kennedy Gardens to have a wander on their snowdrop trail.  I can’t tell you how wonderful it was…fresh air, sunshine and nature – it lifts the spirits like nothing else…forget retail therapy (I am not a shopper anyway) being outdoors after such a wet and dismal winter is like a good dose of medicine or perhaps I should say vitamins.

And now we are homeward bound after a lovely restful week.  I feel ready to take on the house again when we get home; I have even been planning in my head what I will be decluttering next.  There are many items that I just do not use taking up valuable shelf space and I know that I will probably not get around to using them this year either.  Many of them are quite inexpensive; some of them will have been given to me in the first place, so cost me nothing.  My idea is to empty a cupboard completely of its contents and then only put back the things that I actually use or have used in the last 6 months and then review whatever is left.

We stay in the Premier Inn overnight at Carlisle to break the journey home and rest my back but we will no longer be having the breakfasts there.  We only have Continental breakfast anyway – I know how much people love their full cooked breakfast but they are not for me I have never had a liking for fried food.  I usually choose yoghurt with a spoonful of the fresh berries on top and then have 2 slices of toast and a cup of tea and it costs £7.95, DH has museli and a croissant and a coffee for the same price.  You can, for the price, eat all you want but I can’t eat more so I feel it is all a bit wasted on us and over time the breakfast menu is becoming more limited – decaff tea is no longer available, the yoghurts on offer are now down to two types 0% fat greek yoghurt or strawberry, both by Yeo Valley but in smaller tubs than you buy at the supermarket.  Last week they had taken off the brown wholemeal bread and replaced it with what looks like the 50:50 type and it is that awful squidgy steam baked Mother’s Pride type (goodness knows why any mother would be proud of that).  I expect I could complain to the powers that be that run the Premier Inn chain but I doubt they would be the least bit bothered…their priorities these days, like many other businesses, is a nice big profit over customer care and welfare. I presume if they keep limiting the menu bit by bit they can save a fortune over time.

So all in all it is not worth us paying out to have breakfast there.  Instead we are going to take a bowl of our museli and buy a pint of milk and a yoghurt from the garage just down the road. I can cut up a Kiwi or banana to have with it.  We can eat that in the hotel room and make a drink – I will take my own decaff teabag and then later when we are back on the road we will stop at Booths in Penrith or a Costa who both sell a better slice of toast with nice thick wholemeal slices.

Well must go now I have a little packing and cleaning to do before we go. I like to leave the caravan tidy and clean for the next visit and we switch off our fridge because there are often numerous power cuts here (one lasted 3 days) so it has to be emptied and wiped out each time. We have just about managed to eat down all the food we brought and bought – one of the drawbacks to staying in the hotel overnight is trying to keep any chilled foods cool so it is useful for us to finish off any cheese or butter by the end of our visit.

I thought whilst I am talking about the Premier Inn you might like to hear a funny story.

We always stay in the same Premier Inn just off Junction 42 on the M6 at Carlisle (you may know it), and we have over the course of the last 18 months had various different rooms some better than others but never the same one twice – we have had rooms with a very smelly shower curtain, hand soap with a faulty pump, lamps that don’t work, very large spiders, no heating and no toilet tissue but have never experienced the room with no window until our previous stay last December. It was a winter’s evening so when we opened the door to room 101 we were not surprised to see the curtains already closed. However, the first thing I always do when we go into a room is open the window. Imagine my surprise when I pulled back the curtain to be greeted by a blank wall!

Well, I actually fibbed a bit here because when I looked up there was a window but it was way up at the top of the wall near the ceiling, just a long slit really and impossible to see out of or reach to open. This is the window from the outside of the building just above the reception area below.

DH reckoned it had perhaps been a store room at one time and then converted. It felt too claustrophobic for me so we had to ask to be moved. ‘People either love it or hate it’ reception said – you can guess which camp I am in.

Have a great day x

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dear diary ~ time is going quickly now…

We are almost at the end of our time here and winding down on the task list.  There has been rain but mainly overnight and the weather looks set to hold although I think the temperature has dropped a few degrees.

Today I really must prune the apple tree – a job I have kept putting off as I confess I really do not know what I am doing.  I have read up on plenty of pruning advice and watched one or two videos but none of the trees in their pictures look quite like mine and I feel rather daunted by it all.  It is a Braeburn and I have no idea how it is getting pollinated as ideally it says they need two other apple trees and all we have is the large Bramley apple tree nearby.  Surprisingly then, we had a lovely little crop last year.  Now I am worried I might prune off the wrong branches and be left with a framework that produces fewer apples.

We managed the tip run yesterday and the lovely men that work there helped us with unloading the old plasterboard from the kitchen ceiling and then even swept out the trailer – we would not have had that service at home.  They keep the place swept and clean and carefully signed so you know that you are not going to risk getting a puncture there from old nails and broken glass.  Our tip down at home is quite badly run and by people that really couldn’t care less – I am not sure they ever sweep up.

Thankfully, now we have the brown garden waste bin at home to take the stuff we can’t compost we don’t have to visit our tip very often.  When I can I always find homes for any unwanted items rather than take them to the tip, even bits of wood and old tools – there is often a charity that will take odd things or Freecycle. It makes me feel quite ill to see people unloading some quite good stuff from their car into the skips.  It seems criminal to me to see bikes, toys, cabinets etc. being thrown away.  I even saw someone throw away a large plastic dog basket….what would have been wrong about washing it well and passing it on? In Stranraer you can take all these items to the big shed next to the tip where they will sell them on (I believe they repair bikes too).

The snowdrops are spreading around the woodland walk quite nicely now but not as quickly as I would like so I will be transplanting some of them to places new as they are just on the turn and will be over by the time we come again.

We have noticed this week that we seem to have acquired a flock of crows at the cottage – they are being fed indirectly by someone in the village who believes he is feeding the smaller garden birds but the crows are muscling in on the food he puts out and steadily growing in number.  At the moment they are just using our tall trees in the wood to perch on when they are circling overhead but I am a bit worried about them starting to nest there and take up residence.  One of the villages not too far from here suffer with a rather large nesting crow colony and the continual noise they make gets to quite a pitch… and it goes on all day like the Chinese water torture.

I made a large pan of lentil and leek stew yesterday so there is still plenty for today’s evening meal and it means we can garden for that bit longer ……and we certainly need to….I can hear the weeds growing!

Have a great day x

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dear diary ~ rest, relax…repeat

At last some good weather – though it is odd that I have to come all the way to Scotland for it.

There have been changes whilst we have been away we expected it of course as the new owner of the pub, restaurant and caravan site is continually making changes even for change sake, unfortunately, most of them involve planning or licensing applications and he has obviously not applied for any otherwise we would have received notification of them in case we wanted to object.  It appears he has no time to abide by any rules.

The last few days have been so nice we had breakfast and then went straight out into the garden…..whilst the sun shines, make….. full use of it! 

I usually start by going over this little border outside our garden gate that runs along by the upper part of the lane.  I removed a rather large overgrown clump of wild yellow irises to make way for some ground covering plants like geranium and valerian. The hollies, which are all self-seeded and then transplanted, are doing well now and filling out quite nicely – I don’t want huge trees but will keep them pruned to a nice rounded shrub sized plant.  It is so easy at this time of year to dig up some of the dormant plants along with the weeds so I have to take extra care.  DH tackled the Rosa rugosa hedge that runs down along the lane side from the gate – the one that the new owner of the pub and caravan site massacred a couple of years ago – luckily it is hard to kill and has regenerated quite nicely but we always make sure nothing is growing out into the lane so he doesn’t feel he has the need to chop it down again.

We had a rest day yesterday to protect our backs or else we will get little else done for the week.  Instead I used the time to stay indoors and do a little more planning and some digital detox on my computer.

Of course it was too much to hope that mum would be OK during the time both me and my sister are away and we wouldn’t have a crisis on our hands.  It was only a small drama really but to her a major crisis and I wasn’t able to help very much only be on the other end of the phone.  It happened on Sunday evening.  She was waiting for her carers to go and put her to bed.  Her time slot is for 6pm, their previous visit ends at 4 pm so before they put her to bed for the night they usually make her some toast for her tea/supper and a final hot drink.  At 6.45pm she rang me to say they had not come and she couldn’t get through to the office as the answer phone was on. She was clearly agitated as she does not like to go out of routine.  She said she would ring them again to make sure someone was coming.  At 7pm, 7.15pm, 7.30pm, 7.45pm, 8pm, 8.15pm, 8.30pm she rang me again and again to say they still had not shown.  She had spoken to someone at the office, quite aggressively as she does now, and they said a carer was on their way but no explanation was offered as to why they were so late.  Finally at 8.45pm someone arrived – of course mum was hungry, thirsty but most of all cold as she cannot switch the fire on by herself now and the flat had got quite chilly.  She was also dog tired and very angry – I didn’t know whether to feel sorrier for the poor carer or my mum!

Needless to say they have been on time for the last two days.

We had a lovely walk to the village yesterday afternoon, called at the pub by the harbour for a hot chocolate and took a few photos. 

We spotted quite a few new painted rocks along the low road from the village. It is lovely that anyone in the community can add to this – the idea began when one of the residents secretly placed a few painted rocks along the path one night and it has snowballed over the years to the point where the coaches heading for the Mull often stop for their passengers to get off and go and look at them.

Whilst the light was good I managed to complete the last bit of knitting on the little jacket for baby Chocolate.  Try as I might to make it neat I do struggle with edges and picking up stitches but no doubt I just need more practise. Knitting patterns, I find, often leave you high and dry – I am sure for experienced knitters it is not a problem but I need more instructions.  The pattern says to pick up and knit the contrasting band around the hood and then down the front of the jacket which I have done.  It does not say to do both sides….not knowing if I should or not I decided I would and did in fact knit the band on both edges.

I am not sure of the weather today so have no definite plans. There is always plenty to do in the garden but we also need a trip into town for a bottle of gas and to take in a trailer full of old plasterboard from the kitchen ceiling of the cottage. Luckily, the tip here accepts rubble and stuff as not everywhere does. At home you have to get a skip even if you only have a bucketful.

I am starting to feel a litle more relaxed now and am finding the time to sort out one or two tasks off my list which has also helped – things that seem to have been on there for ever and keep getting rolled over each week – you know the ones. It is quite odd that when we are here at the cottage I think about all the jobs I need to do at home and when I am at home I have my mind on what needs doing at the cottage – well mainly in the garden. Perhaps having the distance somehow makes my mind clearer and I feel less overwhelmed. I am sure that life is getting so much busier these days and more stressful and it is not just a matter of being older. Technology was supposed to make things quicker and easier but I find just the opposite…. that you are forever in a queue on the phone or you come up against an answerphone or you get through to some voice telling you to go to their Q&A on their website (don’t they ever think that you have already done that and the answer is not there!

Hope your day is full of promise. x