Pike fishing in Scotland.

2012-02-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

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2012-01-20T16:50:00.000-08:00

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2012-01-15T09:50:00.000-08:00

2012-01-12T07:19:00.000-08:00

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Chilli's

2011-09-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

Boef Bourgignone.

2011-07-30T01:19:00.000-07:00

I made this on holiday a few weeks back. I
start with 8oz of lardons fried in the Dutch Oven.

I then add 8oz each of chopped onion, celery,
carrots and a few chopped cloves of garlic.

A bottle of Burgundy or any nice red wine, and
a couple of pounds of rump steak.

Fry the steak hard to seal in the juices.

Deglaze the pan with some of the wine.

Add the beef, the rest of the wine, and some
good beef or veal stock.

Spend a wee bit of time skimming off any
surface fat.

Dont use salt at this stage, plenty comes from
the lardons.

Caramelise some shallots and button mushrooms
using olive oil and a wee bit of sugar.

Add them about 10 minutes before serving,
with a handful of chopped herbs and freshly
ground pepper. Nice with crusty French bread
and red wine.

2011-07-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

The Mrs and I at the wedding of her
nephew Steven. The kilt outfit is a
simple black, with the Dress Gordon
tartan tie. Do'nt we look cute!!

2011-07-03T04:37:00.000-07:00

We recently visited the Railway Museum at York.
The highlight of the trip for me was the
Bullet Train exhibit, Fantastic!!

How to make Halep.

2011-06-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is my own version of a popular dish from the Agakan Turkish Restaurant in Perth Road, Dundee. They use donner meat, but here I'm using pork fillet, marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper and steak seasoning powder. I give it a good stir to coat the meat and leave it for a while to soak in.

Meanwhile, I'm gently frying some sliced onion, green chilli and garlic in a mixture of olive oil and unsalted butter.

In another pan I fry some chopped chilli in olive oil.

Careful not to burn the onions.

The chilli's are cooked and the flavour infused into the oil so now I add some tomato puree, salt, sugar, water and garlic to taste. Make sure that you have at least 3/4 of a pint because the bread soaks up lots of liquid.

The onions are slightly caramelised now so I add some chopped toasted pitta bread in a layer on top of them.

The chilli/tomato sauce is now ready so a handful of chopped coriander/cillantro is added and the sauce poured over the onion and pitta bread mix.

Let it simmer for a wee while to soak up the chilli sauce.

Meanwhile, I've been gently frying the marinated pork fillet. Let me say at this stage that this dish works equally well with chicken, beef, lamb, kofta's even nice butchers sausages

Quite a bit of liquid comes out of the pork and marinade so be patient and allow it to gently dry out. Do'nt let it burn.

All of the liquid has now been absorbed and the meat is covered in a sort of paste made from the marinade.

The meat is now ready to be placed on the onion and pitta bread, and placed under the grill for a few minutes to caramelise.

This dish works very well with humous, rice, salad and toasted pitta bread.

I did this just for you, Susan Burnett...

More Loch Maree pics from our campmates.

2010-09-05T01:05:00.000-07:00

Loch Maree Revisited.

2010-08-30T09:51:00.000-07:00

Friday the 27th of august finally arrived so Sandra and I were up early packing the van with camping gear, food, drink etc. We had arranged to meet up at Slattadale with Peatbog, Christine and Peat, and our daughter Laurie and boyfriend Dave to once more visit the majestic Loch Maree.

Just about to set off.

Laurie experiencing the joy of "the midgie" for the first time.

This would be us setting up camp, while being devoured by these tiny pyhranna's of the insect world. Ricky, (Peatbog) got the Yukon fired up and cooked us a beef cobbler, thats beef in a rich onion gravy with dumplings, served with new potatoes and green beans. Real stick to your ribs stuff, followed by a few mugs of plonk.

Saturday morning was a bit overcast with a ligh north westerly of about 10 knots. Ricky wanted to have a paddle on a loch on an island on a loch so we headed south to Eilean Subhainn.

Exploring the islands on the way.

This is Ricky folding up his Windpaddle.

This is Meggy, our ESS, happiest when wet.

Having tea and cake before the portage to the loch on the island on the loch, while Ricky puts his Pal on the C-Tug.

No-one thinks to take a pic of the portage. Ricky invites me to be his bow paddler to explore the wee loch. It's the first time I've done this so experiment with a few draws and bow jams.

The wee loch has just about the shortest river section I've ever seen, so we're very quickly back in the main loch and paddle around to meet with the rest of the group.

We saddle up and head to the south of Eilean Subhainn in search of Isle Maree. Laurie and Dave particularly want to visit the Viking graves and the wishing tree.

I think this is Peat drinking the loch in preparation for peeing on Christines sleeping bag.

Throw a stick Dad

The older headstones are of Viking origin, the more modern ones are family of the owners of the Loch Maree hotel, and go by the name Maclean.

Hammering a coin into the wishing tree is a centuries old tradition. Queen Victoria visited the island at some time during her reign.

I found a large stone and knocked in a whole 20p, which is very generous for a Scottish person. Copper wire was invented by two Scotsmen deciding ownership of a 2p coin.

I think that this dove and bits and pieces were placed here by witches or who knows?

Wallace stretching the aching back muscles.

Time to head back to camp, the wind has increased to about 15-16 knots so hard paddling, no pics and a few scary moments going around the points. Sandra gets into a strop because I'm telling her to paddle harder.

Obligatory pic of Slioch.

Back at camp, the clouds clear, the sun comes out, and so do the midgies.

I'm cooking Alloo Ghosht, a lamb and potato curry.

It's a bit of a disaster because I serve it with basmati rice, rogni naan and midgies.

The dogs seemed to enjoy it though. We sit there for a few hours, supping wine and putting the world to rights, finally hitting the sack at about midnight.

At about 3am we are rudely awakened by heavy rain and gale force winds that take out our tarps, chairs tables etc, and its hard to get back to sleep with the fear of a tree being blown onto your tent.

Next morning we awake to a sunny but very windy day, and wonder if we'll be stranded here for a while.

Our spirits are raised by cups of tea and bacon sarnies, and we just sit around blethering, fishing, and chucking sticks for the dogs. Ricky and Christine make a pot of Minestrone for lunch, followed by fruitcake and stilton, and a brew.

MRX makes a nice table.

A wild and windy Loch Maree.

Late afternoon and Laurie makes us barbecued steak, new potatoes, and a creamy mushroom sauce, yummy. The wind by this time had dropped a wee bit, and Laurie and Dave need to get home tonight as they have work next day, so decide to make a break for it. This will mean a 1500 metre crossing in a cross wind so Sandra and I decide to go with them for safety in numbers. We quickly roll up our tents, load the boats, tidy up and say goodbye to our campmates. Ricky and Christine are far better equiped than us for longer stays, and being millionaires, dont need to worry about wether they can make work the next day.

Another pic of Slioch, Sandra just loves this mountain and wants to climb it next year.

By the time we reach the middle of the channel we realise that the wind is decievingly stronger than we thought, and the last few hundred yards are decidedly lumpy with some substantial waves hitting us side on. We decided to ferry glide downwind with Sandra paddling like a demented dervish and your narrator bracing and steering. With a big sigh of relief we reach the lee shore closely followed by Laurie and Dave in the Adventure.

Just for the record, I had always thought of the Mad River Adventure as a sort of recreational peddalo type of craft rather than a serious open canoe. This is not the case and it comfortably carries two people and all their gear in some challenging conditions.

Another pic of, you've guessed it, Slioch.

And another.

Slattadale.

Back on terra firma.

Unloading the boats. The treeline that you can see looks like a coast, it's not until you get closer that you realise it's actually a group of islands.

The trees behind give shelter from the wind and the midgies are out in force, so it's back on with the nets.

We stop at the viewpoint and have a last look at Loch Maree.

I have to say this, to anyone who has'nt yet been there, this has got to be the ultimate Scottish paddle. The scenery is stunning in all directions, and exploring the islands is an adventure in itself.

We're only here for a short while, and dead for a very long time, so here's one for your bucket list.

Loch Maree.

Loch Maree, no tics, no beasties and one black throated diver.

2010-05-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my wife and I, accompanied by our ESS Meg, daughter Laurie, her partner Dave, mate Ricky(Peatbog), his partner Christine and ESS Peat made the long drive north to the beautiful and majestic, Loch Maree. The fifth largest body of water in Scotland, and undoubtedly the most picturesque has aproximately 60 islands to explore. We arrived at about 1800 on the Friday evening with grey skies and a brisk westerly breeze blowing, and decided to quickly head for Eilean Ruaridh Mor as this was the closest island to the picnic area at Slattadale. My wife, Sandra was solo in her brand spanking new Mad River Explorer 14TT. She recently had an operation to repair her Carple Tunnel thingy in her wrist and after half a mile or so was struggling and basically going round in circles so I tied her canoe to mine and towed her the rest of the way.

However we arrived safely on the island and set up camp.

Ricky had made a delicious chicken and smoked sausage gumbo for supper so we had that, and a couple of glasses of wine, and as we were all knackered, had an early night.

Laurie and Dave did'nt have a good night in their hastily bought, £20 sleeping bags so after a breakfast of bacon sarnies and tea decided to paddle across to the mainland and head for the outdoor shop in Gairloch to buy some decent sleeping bags and waterproofs.

Meanwhile, the remaining four decided to explore some of the islands.

It was'nt long before we spotted a nice sandy beach and stopped for a brew.

A wee while later we paddled on to Eilean Subhainn and climbed up to have a look at one of the lochans, and of course another brew. By this time it was about 1300 and we were getting hungry with all that good, clean highland air so headed back to camp. aurie and Dave arrived back shortly after this with their new bivvy bags and some stylish outdoor clothing. They had been looking for us in the maze of islands but finally gave up and came back to camp.

After a wee snack I fired up the wood burning stove to make Kleftiko. This is my version of a Greek dish that is normally made with stolen lamb. On the way up we stopped at a very good butchers in Fochabers with the intention of buying a couple of kilo's of lamb but they did'nt have any. The butcher suggested venison instead so I went for it. I never mentioned to my camp mates that we were going to be eating Bambi because some folks are a bit squeamish about that sort of thing.

I browned the meat, and added white wine, carrots, onions, shallots, garlic, mushrooms, rosemary, cinnamon, salt, pepper, fresh and dried chilli, and some lamb stock cubes, and simmered it for about three hours. I then added a dozen or so new potatoes for the last half hour. It went down rather well and when everyone had finished I asked my fellow campers if they had enjoyed eating Bambi. No complaints!!

Laurie made a lovely lime cheesecake for dessert.

We sat around for the rest of the evening supping red wine and chatting in front of the fire.

Around 8pm Laurie announced that she was "starving" so I knocked up a skillet of Fazulye, green beans, shallot, garlic and chilli in a buttery tomato sauce, and garlic mushrooms with toasted flatbreads. It must have been around midnight when we finally hit the sack.

I awoke first on the Sunday morning and made bacon sarnies and a kettle of tea.

I then took the remains of the driftwood and put it back on the shore where it came from.

I dug a hole next to where the fire had been and burried the ashes under the sand.

By this time everyone was up and dressed and set about rolling up our tents etc as we were leaving this morning. We loaded up the canoes, and gave the camp area a last tidy up before saying goodbye to Ricky and Christine as they were staying another night.

We slowly paddled back to Slattadale picnic area, admiring the scenery and taking pics.

We were quite lucky this morning because as we were loading the canoes onto the trailer a very strong northerly wind whipped the loch to a foam. I was glad we were on the mainland because Sandra and Laurie had decided to tandem in the 14TT and neither of them are very confident in strong sidewinds.

Ricky and Christine were out in the main part of the loch when the wind got up, but their experience and presence of mind told them to quickly head for the nearest island.

The wind dropped as abruptly as it had started, but they decided to call it a day as more northerly squalls were forecast, and ended up getting home around the same time as us.

To finish the tale we had a bit of car trouble on the way home. The clutch release bearing on my Peugeot 307 diesel estate has been noisy for a few thousand miles, and disintegrated around Garve. I knew it was in a bad way because it sounded like a cement mixer full of stones.

We have RAC cover but the very basic package and I doubt that they would have relayed us home, so decided to just drive and see how far we could get. When I had to move off I put it into first gear and started the engine so it would move off, then changed gear by timing the revs and avoiding using the clutch as much as possible. We made it home, and I even managed to drive it to Charles Butler, Gearbox and Clutch Specialist, Forfar where it finally farted and shit itself in the customer parking area. He said do'nt expect much change out of £600!!

First sight of our camp.

Laurie and I discussing cheesecake.

We even had a visit from Mickey Mouse.

Sandra and Laurie tandem.

Armada of Mad River Canoes.

Sunday morning ready for the off.

Ricky and his NC Pal in RX Light.

I made this wood burning stove/cooker from a

stainless steel oil tank salvaged from the skip at work.

Works really well, I'll add a door and damper later.

Getting lunch ready.

Slioch in the distance.

What a beautiful place.

Dave in his adventurer, very stable boat.

Wallace in the action man jersey.

A last look and pic of Loch Maree before the clutch

packed in. Might have been that steep hill that did it.

Italian Style Pizza from scratch.

2010-01-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

In May 2008 the Mrs and I had a touring holiday in Northern Italy. We stayed in a different town every couple of nights including Pisa, Firenze, Roma, Lido de Jesolo and Riva del Garda. The cost of eating out was very high so we went for peasant food most nights, mainly pasta or pizza. Almost every restaurant that we went into had this igloo shaped structure in the corner of the kitchen that we soon learned were wood fired ovens. Pizzaolo guy would kick off with this squash ball sized piece of dough which would be hand stretched and shaped, slapped on the worktop and covered with tomato sauce, meats, vegetables and mozzarella. This would then be placed on the floor of the oven for about two minutes before being retrieved puffed up, scorched, sizzling and absolutely delicious. Most pizzaolo dudes were quite friendly once I had bought them a beer and I managed to get a basic idea of how they were made.
First off, you need heat, lots of heat. These wood fired ovens can give a floor temp of anything up to 600c. For the sauce you need tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano and sugar.
For toppings, good mozzarella, cured meats, olives and various vegetables.
Most of us dont have the luxury of a wood fired pizza oven in our kitchens so tend to make do with shop bought. If you follow this recipe you can make something very similar to that of the Italian Pazzaolo.

For a evening pizza, best to start first thing in the morning.
In a large mixing bowl, put half a bag of strong white flour, 400ml warm water, a dessert spoon of salt, a tablespoon of good extra virgin olive oil and a satchet of yeast.

For the sauce you will need a can of chopped tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt, pepper and sugar.

Put all of the ingredients into a mixing bowl.

Using your hands, mix all of the ingredients together and knead, in the bowl, with your fist for about 5 minutes turning and folding regularly. Cover with cling film and put it in the fridge.

Yes the fridge.....

For the sauce, gently fry 3 or 4 cloves of chopped garlic for a couple of minutes, then add the tomatoes. Bring to the boil then turn the heat down and allow to reduce by a third. Season with salt, pepper, oregano and sugar until it tastes the way you like it. When cool put it in the fridge.

After 8 hours or so it should have risen to more than double its earlier size.

Using your fist, knock all of the air out and place on a floured board.

Cut the dough into 4 pieces. Take the first one and using your hands (or a rolling pin) flatten and stretch the dough until it's large enough to fit into the bottom of a large non-stick frying pan.

Put the pan on a medium heat for a few minutes until it starts to bubble and puff up.

Then put it under a hot grill for a couple of minutes until it just starts to brown.

The browning helps stop the sauce from soaking into the bread too quickly. Cover the base with sauce, then whatever toppings you may want, and lastly the mozzarella.

A few minutes under the grill and it should look like this.

This is the second one, see how it's puffed up like a football. Not a problem, just slap it down.

This one has pepperoni, ham, mushrooms, red onion, and fresh green chilli.

Thin crisp base, and all those flavours mingling. Nice with a chilled Asti Spumante.....

The dough mix can be used for chiabatta loaves, rolls, flatbreads etc.

New Years Day trip to Loch Oich.

2010-01-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks back my Mrs informed me that she would be working over 31st December-1st and 2nd of January. I decided there and then that this would be a fine opportunity for a canoe-camping-pike fishing trip to the Highlands, namely Loch Oich. Madame suggested that I seek some counselling, and scoffed that when the time came I would have surely changed my mind. However, when she arrived home from work on the 31st to find the canoe on top of the car, and the car filled with camping and fishing gear, she wished me well and suggested that I "bundle up", and make sure to have plenty of hot drinks and dont let anything happen to the dogs!. Anyway, next morning I was up at the crack of dawn, well 0730, it was New Year after all. A last minute check to make sure I had'nt forgot anything and we were on our way at 0830. The first pic was taken at Drumochter Pass. A herd of red deer had come down off the mountain in search of food, and were just a couple of hundred yards from the road.

I always stop for a brew at Laggan Dam. Last time I passed this way five of those pipes were scooting out millions of gallons of water every hour because there had been so much rain. Not so today though, as everything is frozen, the rivers, the loch, everything. Next stop is the Little Chef at Spean Bridge for a Olympic Breakfast, toast and a mug of coffee.

We arrive at the loch to find about 14 inches of snow. I must stop at this point to say that my hat goes off to the snow plough crews of Scotland. They're on the go 24/7 right through the holiday period and do a great job. Unsung heroes they are.

Anyway, we find a nice spot to quickly pitch the tent, collect some firewood, unload the boat and off for a paddle. This is Meg, my English Springer Spaniel. Meg loves to come out in the canoe and is happy to sit and watch the birds and enjoy the fresh, highland air. Milly, my Basset Hound also likes to join me in the canoe, but unfortunately, she is not prepared to sit still. On the contrary, she likes to do her bark, howl, fart rendition, at every bird, passing boat, car, truck while running up and down, side to side. She had to wait in the car. In fact, the poor girl had to spend most of the time in the car due to her legs being only four inches or so, and the snow going higher than her head. Also the ice on top of the snow was likely to give her an injury to her lower bits.

No fishing today, just out for a paddle around the gin clear water in flat calm, -8c conditions.

After a couple of hours exploring we notice that the sun is going down rapidly so decide to head for camp, and get a fire going. We are joined by another lone pike fisherman called Stu. Stu has brought a chicken rogan josh and a couple of bottles of red wine, and we have a one pot rustic Boef Bourguignon, a four pack of Italian Moretti beer, and a cheeky wee Laphraoig.

By 2230 the fire is low and no more firewood, so we decide to hit the sack. I'm in a camp bed with a roll mat and my four season sleeping bag, and the dogs are on a roll mat with their own basket liners so hopefully insulated from the snow/ice under the tent.

As I'm dropping off to sleep I can hear the snow landing on the roof of the tent.

Disaster strikes at about 0330. A load of snow has fell from the tree above us directly onto the tent, smashing the poles and the whole thing collapses in a heap around us.

All I can do at this point is gather up the two bewildered, panic stricken dogs, beds and sleeping bags and head for the car. I start the engine and the temp on the dash shows -11. The next thing I knew it was 0730, so pulled my boots on and went to assess the damage. Broken poles, ripped pole pipes, a write off. While waiting for the kettle to boil, I dismantle whats left of the tent, roll it up and dispatch it to the bin in the lay-by. A strong cuppa, three paracetamol and a Zantac and I'm ready for anything. The frying pan goes on with sausages, black pudding, bacon, eggs and tattie scones for all three of us, thats me, Meg and Milly. Out in the field my troops eat at my table. Milly's had breakfast, a pee and a poo so she's off to the car for a few hours while Meg and I paddle to the east end of the loch for hopefully, some serious pike fishing.

Unfortunately, the part of the loch that has produced some nice winter pike to 36lbs for me in the past is frozen solid, and we are stuck with fishing from a featureless bank that I would'nt normally give a second glance. Needless to say, we blanked.
Acres of ice.
My first ever SOTP shot.
Grey Owl Voyageur paddle that I recieved from Santa Claus, well, Sandra Claus. This bay looked pikey but too much ice.
The wee boat belongs to Stuart, who we celebrated the New Year with last night.
Nice upside down shot.
Looking east towards Fort Augustus and Loch Ness.
We've started heading for home now but could'nt resist a shot of Loch Lochy and the nice backdrop of a very cold looking glen.
Laggan Dam again with the Nevis range in the background.
Loch Moy completely frozen over.
Huge icicles hanging from the cliff.
Shot of the mountains above Loch Trieg.
Brew stop.

Above and below are shots of the castle on the banks of the frozen Loch Laggan. This is the are where the series, Monarch of the Glen was filmed.

Nice frozen waterfall, and trees so heavilly laden with snow that they are bowed over.

Stretch the old legs.

More roadside deer at Drumochter. There were hundreds of them all the way to Pitlochry. I stopped at the Chinese takeaway in Pitlochry and had chicken with peppers and black bean sauce with extra chilli, and fried rice.

A great wee winter trip for us, and the best part is I dont start back to work until Tuesday so, long lies and chill out tomorrow.....

2009-12-27T10:32:00.000-08:00

Santa brought me a canoe trolley and a nice bottle of malt+ the usual chox and sox etc
Merry Christmas........

Loch Oich.

2009-12-12T00:33:00.000-08:00

A couple of weekends back, a wee group of SOTPers, that's me William Wallace, Ossianic Tales, Pedrothebairn, and Johnnytheboy accompanied by a wee group of non SOTPers, My son Andy, grandson Josh, Don, Thomas and Ot's buddy Mel, had a weekend fishing and canoeing trip to Loch Oich. We are all members of the Central Branch of a club called the Pike Anglers Alliance for Scotland, and also subscribe to SOTP that's a forum/website called Song of the Paddle.

http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/

We arranged to meet at Dalwhinnie for a coffee then head up to the Oich from there.

On the way we stopped at Laggan Dam to look at the awesome spectacle of the overflow spouts as thay had had a lot of rain in the area. This feeds the River Spean, a popular river with kayakers, and you can see why.

After a brief blether and a few piccies we carried on through Spean Bridge to our log cabins at Loch Oich. After sorting out our rooms and gear myself Josh and Andy got stuck into making the supper. Nothing fancy, just a wee starter of Bruschetta, thats toasted hand cut bread rubbed with garlic, squishy tomato and olive oil, topped with Italian meats and cheese.

This was folowed by Lasagne Bolognese, French Fries of Maris Piper, thin cut and twice fried, and a layered salad. OT made a superb Lemon Merangue Pie which was devoured in minutes, then we all headed off to the bar. I cant remember much after that for some reason, must have been the Highland air.

Next morning I was up before all but Don, who was out fishing at first light, and got stuck into making a healthy breakfast of sausages, bacon, eggs, black pudding and a muesli skirly, toast and a pot or two of real Italian coffee.

After breakfast we heard that Don had already had a pike so got our fishing heads on.

Andy, Josh and I decided to head up the eastern part of the loch as there are some good pike holding features up there.

First thing we did was get a wee fire going. Josh paddled over to the island to try for some dry wood, but it wasnt any drier than that on the bank. The canoe is quite an old Pyranha made from royalex. My mate Phil kindly lent it to us for the weekend. Nice boat, very light and turns on a sixpence.

Lots o reek but no much heat but he eventually managed to get it lit, and soon we had a brew on.

This is my boat with a rod either side.

Pedrothebairn and Johnnytheboy in Pedro's Mobile Adventure, chucking lures around to no avail.

This is Meggy, my English Springer Spaniel, happiest when she's covered in mud and shivering with the cold.

This is a view of Loch Oich at sunset, with 40 minutes of paddling left.

Getting ready to head back to the cabin for a sauna and a shower.

Josh in his usual position, picking his nose when he should be paddling.

So we headed back to the cabin for a sauna and a swim. Meanwhile, Johnnytheboy had been busy making a huge pot of Chilli con Carne which we had with loaded potato skins, wraps, garlic bread, guacamole, salsa and soured cream. It was so good that I went back three times.

Then we went off the the bar. I have a recollection of a bottle of Havana Club in the wee small hours but its rather vague.

Next morning was horrible with rain, snow, sleet and avery other kind of weather thrown at us so no-one seemed very keen to get out fish except Don. Don is a man of the mountains, lochs and streams, and was totally unperturbed, and very well prepared for this. He had 3 pike for the weekend and was the only one to catch.

After a huge fry up, Andy, Josh and I decided to head for home, while the others were staying for another night.

A great weekend with top scran and the best company, hope we can do it again next year...

Scotch Bonnets in Scotland?

2009-10-18T09:40:00.001-07:00

I planted 18 of these back in March of this year, never expecting much of a result. 2 months later in May I saw the first seedlings appear, 5 to be exact.
I gave 1 to a buddy, and kept the rest for myself. This one has about a dozen fruits, and once they go red/yellow I'll make chilli con carne calliente.

Milly and Meg have a canoe picnic.

2009-10-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

Sandra and I have been on holiday for the last week. It's been spent mainly cutting firewood for our winter supply of fuel for the wood burning stove, tidying up our half acre garden, getting the chicken coop winterised etc etc.
Monday was such a nice day though, that we had go for a paddle, and maybe I could try for a pike....

This is a wee loch near Dunkeld. There's a small island in the south west corner so this seemed the best place to take the dogs, as they would'nt be able to wander off. Meg is our 10 year old English Springer Spaniel. Meg is very well behaved, unlike Milly, our 2 year old Basset Hound, she's absolutely bonkers.

I stood watching my rods/floats/baits not catching any pike while Sandra got a wee fire going.

Nothing like burger and onions cooked over an open fire in a proper old fashioned black iron frying pan.

Milly decides to patrol the shoreline and bark/howl/fart at anything that moves.

Well, I never caught a pike but it was a great day just the same.

I do catch the occasional pike though

White water rafting.

2009-08-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday along with my son Andy I tried white water rafting for the first and not the last time. This was at the Linn of Tummel, a 2 1/2 mile stretch of grade 2 river finishing with a grade 4 18ft waterfall. The Canadian guide is right at the back and I'm just in front of her.

We never made it, and were swimming just a few seconds later.

Great fun...

Canoe pic.

2009-08-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

This is Josh and I on step 5 of an 8 step dam.
We capsised at number 8 due to getting our paddling out of whack.
Good fun though.
I'll get back into my blogging when the cold winter nights come in.
Gordon.

2009-06-19T06:21:00.000-07:00

I've been having lots of fun with the canoe this last few weeks. This pic was taken last night on the river South Esk between a wee town called Brechin, and the Bridge of Dun close to the Montrose Basin. There had been a lot of rain so the water was very high and fast. Very difficult to get decent pics on a canoe trip because no-one is very keen to bring camera's or cellphones in case they get wet. This part of the river has quite a few rapids and wiers, and also lots of hairpins and islands.

Great fun....

Chickens.

2009-06-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

I finished the chicken coop/henhouse a week past Sunday and on the Monday, Sandra and I went to see a breeder to buy some point of lay hens.

These are called Light Sussex and cost just £10 each. They were much bigger than we expected, and have been laying 4-6 eggs per day between them. The eggs mostly have two yolks of a very deep orange colour and taste great. I have'nt let them out yet but over the next few weekends I'll let them out for a short while in the evening to see if they are happy to come back when it gets dark. Watch this space.............

Sunsets, Rainbows and Chickens.

2009-05-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

I've been on holiday this week. Not for a rest but
to catch up on some projects, mainly the chicken
run. I started on the Wedensday by digging eight
eighteen inch deep holes. I then put in the posts with
concrete which I hand batched myself. Thursday
the concrete had set so I set about building the
compound. This has to be tight to the floor to keep
foxes and badgers out.

At this point I have hung the gate, and built the

three sides up with chicken wire. Still have to work

out how to do the front. I intend to have a double

stable type door and another mesh panel. I'll need

to resite the smoker. I'll need to start using the smoker.

Too much work and no play makes Jack

a dull boy.

Nice sunset from my front garden.

Looking out back and there was this nice part

rainbow.

Finally some leaves appearing on the beech trees.

Its going to be a good summer of hard work and hard play.

Canoe trailer project.

2009-04-30T12:51:00.001-07:00

Myself and a few guys from the Paisley Pikers
Fishing Club have purchased Canadian Canoes
this year. The are many rivers in Scotland
suitable for open canoes and we will be doing
a few expeditions this summer through until
autumn and beyond. To do a river its a good
idea to have a trailer capable of carrying a
load of camping/fishing gear and anything up
to 6 canoes. I got this for the taking away.
Its an old caravan chassis, and formerly was
a towable holiday home for a family of four.

Not much to look at but great potential.

Here I have welded angled mild steel sections

to beef up the frame and give us some storage

space. A good mate gave it the treatment with

a wire brush and grinder.

Typically I give it a couple of coats of paint and

on comes the rain, but it was almost dry anyway

so no harm done.

Here I've made a start to timbering the floor and

sides, and fitted a replacement hitch as the other

one was beyond repair.

With a little help from friends I built the canoe

frame. It will take five sixteen foot canoes and

a whole lot of camping and fishing gear. Room for

another canoe on my roof rails if need be, and

more stowage space in the back of my estate car.

Cheers for now.

Gordon.

Plans for this growing season.

2009-04-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

First proper post for a few months. The last couple of weekends have seen an improvement in the weather so I have made a start to the veggy plot. I now have 20 raised beds.

Shallots do'nt mind if its a wee bit cold.

This garlic was planted last October and should be ready about June. I have lots of veg started in small pots in the greenhouse including tomatoes, zuchini and peppers that will stay in there, and also some cabbage, beans, sweetcorn, fennel etc that will be transplanted into beds once they are established.

Other projects have included rebuilding an old Yamaha TT 600 Enduro motorcycle, converting a old race kart to an offroad buggy for my grandson, and converting a old caravan chassis to a trailer for transporting my logs etc, building a canoe rack to fit the trailer and lets not forget working 6 days and a couple of evenings a week. Sometimes it feels like there are not enough hours in a day.....

Canadian Canoe.

2009-02-18T12:13:00.001-08:00

Inspired by Mungo's canoe trip into the wilderness

last year I decided to see what it's like for myself.

Sandra bought this for me as a Christmas present.

It's a wee bit too cold just now and some of the lochs

are still frozen, but if its not too windy I will definitely

try it out this weekend.

Have to practice my J stroke....I'll report back;-)

2009-01-18T04:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5tEUqU0SL0&eurl=http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=big+forklift&emb=0&feature=player_embedded

Merry Christmas.

2008-12-25T12:36:00.001-08:00

My oldest son, Gordon, his fiancee Mel, Josh and Oliver (pictured), and my daughter Laurie came over for Christmas dinner today. We had for starters Chinese crispy duck with pancakes, spring onions and cucumber salad, and hoi sin sauce, then a hearty lentil soup with home baked bread. Entree was a barbecued fillet steak with pepper sauce, mashed potatoe with roasted sweet potatoe and caramelised red onion and a medley of spring/winter vegetables. Dessert was a Baileys Irish Cream cheesecake. Before they arrived Sandra, Meggy and I went for a walk along the farm road. It was cold and misty, the trees bare, not the nicest day for a walk but Meggy loved it. I dont mind this time of year because we are half way through the winter.
Santa Claus was good to me this year. Two bottles of Malt, a Cragganmore and a 18 year old Glenlivet. Lots of chocolate. Thermal socks, some shirts, a new jacket and chino's, but best of all, a Canadian canoe. Have'nt got it yet but the cash is there. I'll see what deals are on the go in January. Deliverance trips this spring/summer. I'll report back.........

Wood burning stove.

2008-12-10T13:14:00.003-08:00

Its rather cold here in Scotland at the moment. Most mornings I am travelling to work on icy roads with temperatures of -5c. Whether I'm working or fishing its always nice to come home to a warm house. The stove has been on constantly for about 3 months now, and we have used three layers of logs from the woodstore. The cottage has a central heating system which runs on kerosene, but it's very expensive to run, so for the most part we only use the boiler for hot water. First pic is of the stove with Salem, our cat close by. She thinks she's a ferral cat I'm sure because she never comes in the house during summer. Between you and me she's a fair weather ferral cat. Salem was 13 last month and still very fit and healthy. She's well capable of taking small rabbits and birds, I think that her diet consists of the food we put down to her, animals and birds she hunts, and more than likely another couple of families who thing Salem, Blackie, Tiddles is actually their cat.

Second pic as a basket of dried beech logs. Hardwoods such as ash and beech are best for a wood burning stove as they give out lots of heat, but still burn for much longer than soft wood.

Nice car.

2008-11-27T07:06:00.001-08:00

This nice old "49" Chevy was waiting in the queue for the ferry at Dunquerke. It was one of the nicest custom cars I have ever seen. A lowrider with all the hydraulics, and the roof chopped by about 6inches. The owner said he spent more time fixing her than driving her but thats the breaks..........

Bruges.

2008-11-26T13:30:00.000-08:00

Sandra and I went to the cinema a few weeks ago and watched "In Bruges" with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes. The movie was a bit dreary but the city of Bruges looked great, so we decided to pay it a visit. Its a beautiful city with lots of museums, churches and canals. It also has a very difficult one way system and some very long street names. We were to be staying at the Ensor Hotel, named after the famous Belgian painter, James Ensor. The Ensor is on a street called Speelmansrei but Sandra navigated us to Speelmanstrasse, nowhere near the Ensor. We were so tired and stressed by the time we got to the hotel that all we wanted was a long, cold beer see above. A few of these and we were ready for some food. It was very late by this time so we found some street food in the form of shawarma kebabs. This is thick, crusty Belgian bread filled with barbecued chicken, salad and very spicy chilli mayo. Hot on the way in, hot on the way out next morning.

The first place of interest was the Chocolate Museum.

Dogs only cock their leg to pee, not to poo, but they had the right idea.

The sculptures are made of fine belgian chocolate. The Easter Egg is aprox 6 ft tall.

Sculptures in white chocolate that looked like fine percelain.

This is the steeple that poor old Brendan Gleeson had to chuck himself out of in the movie, and the bell mechanism. In truth, the bell tower is jump proof due to the stainless steel mesh.

This is the view from our hotel balcony. There were pike and carp present, should have taken a rod....

Bruges.

2008-11-12T13:56:00.000-08:00

Sandra and I are off to Bruges this weekend, for some Christmas shopping. We are also going to stock up on wine, beer and probably some nice stinky cheese, pates etc. I've been very busy of late, and regretfully neglecting my blog. I'll take some nice pics when we are in Belgium, and post them up next week. Watch this space...........

First decent fish for a while.

2008-11-03T23:28:00.000-08:00

Not a monster but a very welcome fish at about 11.5lbs. She was caught, quickly unhooked and carefully returned unharmed to a small, vary narrow loch not far from where I live. I'll be spending a wee bit of time there over the winter. This is the time of year when pike start feeding hard, preparing themselves for lean times over the worst part of winter, and precluding spawning/mating in the spring.

Hope this is the shape of things to come.

Loch Oich last weekend.

2008-11-01T11:54:00.001-07:00

The Inverness Open Pike Competition.

Thirty Five brave souls stuck it out for eight hours of four seasons in one day. None of my group of seven caught a fish but we had a good day, and a nice outdoor lunch. In between the storms there were some spectacular rainbows.

Out of the 35 anglers only 5 fish were caught. Tournament was won by a catch of 2 fish for a weight of less than 10 pounds.

There's always next year........

New Job.

2008-10-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

I was working as a Facilities Maintenance Helper
with Halliburton Esk Facility at Montrose.
A vacancy came up for a Associate Materials
Handling Specialist and I applied for it.
After a brief interview I was told that I had been successful.
This is one of the forktrucks I have to drive.
It takes up to 16 tonnes and can carry containers
up to 60 feet long. Its made by Toyota and is very easy to drive.
I have to climb 4 steps to get into the cab.
Perhaps I'll get one of the lads to do a short video
of me moving something huge, once I am more confident.

Its been a while.

2008-10-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

I,m not one for pike matches but the Inverness Pike Angling Clubs annual match on Loch Oich is an exception. Very well organised and run by people with a passion for Esox Lucius.

Josh and I entered last year on a day when it was very difficult to catch a pike. The sun was bright, the sky clear, and not so much as a puff of wind.

Maybe this year will be different.

Harvest time.

2008-08-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

We have 7,000,000 tomatoes in the greehouse.
Yellow ones on the left and red on the right.
Its been a long wait as these are mainly continental
varieties that need lots of sunshine and warmth.
The weather here in Scotland this summer has been
cold, wet and windy with occasional sunny intervals.

Harvested all of the onions, garlic and shallots yesterday.

Have to leave them in the potting shed to dry for a few days then I'll

string them together and hang them up for use over the winter.

The garlic was an unexpected success because I did not expect

it to do well in our cool climate.

These are my runner or string beans.

They are almost eight feet high and producing lots of pods now.

I'll freeze a few pounds of them for use over the winter.

To the left are twelve Brussels Sprout plants. Most have a few small sprouts

so I'll harvest a few pounds of them also for the freezer.

Christmas dinner would'nt be the same without sprouts.

A good crop of leeks this year. I'll leave them in over winter

and just use them as required. The bushy stuff is Florence Fennel.

Tastes a bit like aniseed and I'm not convinced that I like it very much so might

not bother with it next year.

Another mutant courgette has invaded the greenhouse.

I gave the last one to the Sultan, a Turkish restaurant

in Forfar. It was aprox 18 inches long and was pressing

against the greenhouse glass, so I had to cut it.

The Brechin Horticultural Society are having a flower and veg show

in the next week or so, so I might exhibit some of my produce.

Compost.

2008-08-15T02:15:00.000-07:00

We keep this compost cage at the top of the garden. All our organic household waste goes in here, including grass cuttings and garden/greenhouse waste. We should be able to use it next spring. Within a couple of days of filling it to the top it rots down again. I thinkthe hard job will be laying it on a tarp and mixing it as its layered with grass, organic household waste, eggshells, cardboard, garden waste, coffee grounds, shredded paper etc.
The are two free coffee machines at the Halliburton facility where I work and the guy saves the coffee grounds for me.
Coffee grounds are helpful in more ways than just compost. Slugs and snails dont go near them.

A good weekend fishing.

2008-08-10T02:01:00.000-07:00

The pics are all dated 05/01/2004 because I
could'nt be bothered changing the date after
fitting new batteries.
Had a 24hr session on my favourite place in Scotland, Loch Oich, with Sandra, Meggy and my mate Stuart. This is my boat, Chrissie11 taking a rest. Quite important to find a nice sandy bit to beach the boat. This saves unneccessary scratches on the hull.
Weather on the Friday evening was fine, and we sat out till 11pm and had a glass or two of wine and a barbecued burger, pulled in the baits and hit the sack.
Saturday morning as usual for this part of the world it rained for about 4 hours then heavy showers for the rest of the day, but I was still up and about at 6am, getting a wee fire going and casting out fresh baits. Altogether I had 7 pike ranging from about 5lb to 15lb, all carefully unhooked and returned to fight another day.

This is me about to return a wee pike of about 5lb, the first of many.

And another one goes back. You will have noticed that
Meg is never far away when I have a fish.
Apart from all of the electronics, floats and clickers
she is my best early warning system. She carefully
watches the reels and floats, and listens for beeps
alerting me to the first sign of a bite.

Best fish of the session was this one of about 15lb. She took bait no. 4 and after a good hard fight I was able to unhook her in the water allowing her to swim off. 5 minutes later she took bait no.1 but had to be netted this time as I could'nt see the hooks. Check those teeth! This old battleaxe has chomped through many a small fish in her day.
Nice to see this ocean going yacht going through the waterway under a big genoa. Most of them use engine power as the loch is so narrow its hardly worth the amount of tacking they would have to do, but the wind was just perfect on this occasion.

These 12 foot Fox Warrior rods are all fitted with Abu 6501 c3 multiplier reels, big orange floats or bobbers and set with the clicker on these "Fox mx blue" electronic bite alarms. When a fish picks up a bait I want as much warning as possible so I can strike before the pike has a chance to either swallow or drop the bait.
Nice to have the same reel on all four rods. so whichever rod I pick up, it will always have the same action.

Harvest time again, and a hot dog.

2008-08-03T05:24:00.001-07:00

Its scorchingly hot here today, in between some very heavy showers of rain. Meg is sheltering under a bush from the sun, but still steaming. There is plenty of water for her to drink nearby.
She had a blockage the other day and had to go to the vet. Meg has a tendancy to swallow stones and they sometimes get lodged in the small intestine. The vet has told us to muzzle her but I'm not keen to o this. A muzzled dog is stigmatised as a biter, and also has no protection against attack from another dog. The operations cost about £450-£600 a time and this would have been her third and last time under the knife. Vets will not do bowel sugery on a dog more than three times, so next time may be her last.

These are my peppers. A mix of chili and capsicum. Should have plenty by September.

Courgettes (zuchini) and cucumbers.

Squillions of toms. Aparently, when the weather gets too cold for them you can wrap them in newspaper and put them in a cool dark place to ripen.

Broad beans are nice in just about any savoury dish, and also make a nice humous.

Brussels sprouts are just starting to form on the stalks of these plants. Should be ready about November. I'll leave them out over the winter as they slow right down in cold weather. And we are guaranteed cold weather here.

Some interesting veg here. The bushy stuff is Florence Fennel. These will be ready in the next couple of weeks so must try to find some recipe ideas. The curly brassica is Kale, a vegetable well suited to Scotlands climate. This is a old fashioned vegetable from the golden days before fridges and canned veg. 100 years ago most homes in the UK would have grown some kale as it would be the only green veg available after December. Use it in soups and broth.

Swedes here, soup would'nt be the same without Swede.

Heres another pic of kale in its early stage. I reckon you could plant this in gravel and it would flourish.

Holidays in the English Lake District.

2008-07-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

Visited Morecambe and had my pic taken with Eric Morecambe, half of the comedy duo, Morecambe and Wise.

Not a particularly big fish but a welcome one. It weighed about 11lb or so and fell to a wobbled brown trout bait. This one caused me a bit of pain because when I picked it up the treble became embedded in my finger, followed by the fish struggling. This is the second time in fifteen years of pike fishing that this has happened to me. We all need a wee reminder now and again that hooks hurt fish. When I returned this fish to the water its jacket or slime coat came off. This happens when the water is low in oxygen or too warm. Fishing cancelled for the rest of the holiday.
Weather was mainly cold, wet and windy so spent most of the week reading and sight seeing in the rain

.

Seeing this well looked after old VW dormobile reminded me of the one Sandra and I had when the kids were small. Ours was a red and white one of the same model as this one. It had a double bed and two hammocks up in the roof. We went away wild camping every weekend with it. Money was tight for a young couple so we never used campsites, mainly layby's and forest areas.

Great fun.....

It rained quite a bit back home also, and the garden resembles a jungle.

My first capsicum, first of many I hope.

Lots of tomatoes now, and I've had to freeze a few cabbages, broccoli and cauliflowers.
We have squillions of carrots, Swedes, peas, Florence Fennel, Kohl Rabi and enough onions and garlic for a good few months. The shallots are hanging up to dry in the potting shed.
All for now....

Big fish and blue green algea.

2008-07-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

Not the best pic ever but a nice female pike of 23lb.08oz. She took a float fished brown trout, slowly retrieved 4 feet beneath a large float in 12 feet of water, charging around for a full 10 minutes before being netted by Josh.

An hour and a half later I hooked into this fine specimen of exactly 20lbs using the same method but lamprey for bait this time. This one did'nt put up such a spirited fight and I was surprised at the size of this fish when Josh slipped the net under her.

This is a pic of the bigger fish a few minutes after release. She just lay and sulked for a few minutes before swimming off.
No blue green algea this year so far, and the water is very clear. I think the cold summer last year may have had a adverse affect on it. Its been cold, wet and windy here the last few days but; Sandra and I are off to the Cumbrian Lakes for a week this Saturday, hopefully the weather 300 miles south of here will be a wee bit better. Might even catch a big pike, who knows?

Mutant courgette.

2008-07-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

This courgette/zuchini plant has turned into a monster of the greenhouse. Today its about 18 inches long and growning an inch a day.

This is Meg, our English Springer Spaniel.

Nothing she likes better than a run through a wheat field, except a swim in a loch.

Lots of veg ready for the pot now with cabbages, little cauliflowers, baby broccolli, carrots, peas, etc.

This is part of the 45 acre field in front of the cottage. Peas this year and naturally, we'll have our fair share. Nothing like rustled pea and ham soup.

I've been putting off starting the poultry project but hope to make a start this weekend as I have three days off.

Big Fish.

2008-07-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

I had the priviledge of netting and witnessing a good mate catching and releasing his first 20+ on Sunday afternoon. She weighed in at 22lb and 12oz. This fine lass would have been a big 20 or even a 30 in the latter part of the winter, but as she has recently spawned the weight was down.

Very difficult to catch a pike of this size at this time of year so hats off to Craig,

Well done mate!

Wood sheds of Europe.

2008-06-28T00:59:00.000-07:00

This one courtesy of Niel from Wales. Takes no.1 spot. Be a shame to burn it really, its a work of art. And all done with a wee bow saw and a croquet mallet. Amazing!!

Not the best pic as I could'nt be bothered walking around for a close up. Different method again, the stacker nails four uprights to the base of a pallet and builds them up like that.
Fine if you have access to a forklift or pallet truck.

The one above was at the rear of a hotel in Austria, I'm such a geek you know. While everyone was admiring the Alps I was drooling over this woodstore. I'm going to put myself in a home for woodstore geeks.

This one was in a wee village near Lake Garda

This is mine, there are much more in since this pic was taken. Must tidy up the yard this weekend. I'm not back at work until Tuesday so hope to get a few projects under way this weekend, including the chicken run.

My veggie plot.

2008-06-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

Its all looking pretty good at the moment. There has been plenty of rain and sunshine to get these plants on the move. At front are the broad beans, cauli's, cabbage, next row 3 different types of carrot, parsnips and Brussel Sprouts. Next row leeks, more carrots, Swedes, peas and runnur beans.

Something strange has happened to my garlic. I pulled the first one last night and it was more like a leek. It has'nt bulbed but still quite nice for cooking with, good flavour. I think I might call it garleek. The shallots have all bolted but I nipped the flowers off every day so fingers crossed.

Lots of little tomatoes growing in the glasshouse along with cucumber, chilli and peppers.

This was purchased as a cucumber plant but I think there may have been a mix up at the garden centre because these are courgettes or zuccini and one of them is turning into a bloody great marrow. Makes nice soup........

These are red pepper plants in the corner, and should produce some fruit in the next few weeks.

Another big fish.

2008-06-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is my grandson Josh with a fish of about 6lb. I've already carefully removed the hook and encouraging him to hold it for a pic. Not the happiest looking fellow but he'll get used to it.

I know, I know, I look terrible. I'd had a few beers, hot, hot chilli chicken and been eaten alive by MIDGES, thats the Scottish equivelant of mosquito's. It was half past ten, pissing with rain and blowing an absolute hooligan of a gale. I was just about to reel in my baits for the night when this lovely lady picked up a small dead trout with my debarbed hooks concealed on its flank

Playing a big pike in the dark is awesome because you dont know where it is. It could be fifty yards away or five, very nerve racking. After several attempts by my grandson Josh, he finally got the net under her and by torchlight, I carefully removed the hooks. She weighed in at 17lb 12 oz. Josh needs some lessons in photography but fortunately my mate Barry took some pics as well. He's going to email them when he has time. He also took some pics of Loch Oich and the surrounding scenery so I'll post them later.

Loch Oich with Chrissie 11 and Barry's rods, barbecue, firewood etc.

Please note that however untidy we are at camp, when we leave, we only leave flattened grass. The only thing we take away is pictures, memories, and our rubbish.

Highland Pike.

2008-06-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

Took this pic of the veggy plot this morning. Looking good.

This weekend I'm meeting up with my old mate Barry and his son and we're off to Loch Oich for an overnighter. Hope to catch something this time as the last two sessions up there have been hangovers and not much more.

Today, (Friday) I'm splitting this wee pile of beech logs, about 300kg or 1/3 of a ton. Very green, with lots of gnarly bits inside so it will take a while.

The greenhouse this morning. Tomatoes are now over 5 ft tall and growing noticably by the day. Once I start to see small fruits I will have to start cutting back some of the branches. This allows more goodness to go to the fruit. There are now some buds on the peppers and chilli's, and lots of baby cucumbers.

2008-06-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

Recent strong northerly winds brought down this small ash just a few hundred yards from the cottage, so I loaded up the Husqy's, put on my chaps, and set to work. I managed to get aprox 0.6 tonnes, thats 2 traler loads.

Since this pic was taken I have completed the front face to the roof. Two more and I can relax and spend more time in the veg plot and hopefully, FISHING.

The broad bean plants are in flower so should produce some in the next few weeks.

Once the carrots start showing I'll start thinning them.
Baby carrots with butter, salt and pepper, almost as good as sex, but not quite.
The peas are starting to flower also so should have in a few weeks.
Speaking of peas, the 45 acre field at front of the cottage has been planted out with peas. They are'nt the sweet garden variety like mine but make excellent pea and ham soup.
I need some rain.

Big Fish

2008-06-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

Caught and carefully returned this evening a fine female pike of just over 18lbs. Post spawn this young lady would have gone over 20 but a wee bit lean at this time of year.
Well chuffed though.
Gordon.

firewood

2008-06-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I had sliced up a couple of rather large branches from an old beech tree. These were left stacked in the forest to start the drying process. Last weekend , with some help from Roy, I extracted most of it and brought it home for splitting. The equipment in the above pic is what I use for this purpose. A splitting hammer, sledge hammer and a four way splitting grenade. Also in the background a pair of splitting axes.

Find the centre of the slice and hammer it in. Most times it will split the slice in half but sometimes three or four can be achieved. Once the slice has been broken down into more manageable sections I use the splitting hammer to break it into aprox 4"-5" or 100mm-125mm logs. The splitting hammer is a great tool for this job because it never gets stuck due to the wide blade. It either splits the wood or bounces off it.

We use aprox 2 1/2 cords of wood most winters. A cord is a stack of closely packed logs measuring 4' x 4' x 8' or 1200mm x 1200mm x 2400mm aprox.
It is my intention to fill the woodstore to full capacity of 4 cords this year.
I start off with 2 large pallets set slightly high at the front, then carefully build the logs like bricks, always sloping slightly backwards. This reduces the risk of an avalanche. Once the store is full I will nail a couple of boards across the front for extra security.

At the front of the store you can see some sawn softwood logs. This is wood that I salvage from the Halliburton facility where I work as a handyman. One of my duties is the management of pallets and crates. These are repaired or re-used where possible, but those that are'nt, I dismantle and recycle. I have permission from the management to take home whatever I need so I take full advantage of this. The rest goes to a chipboard/MDF manufacturer. I also manage the recycling of all paper/cardboard/plastic and glass etc.

I'm going fishing this evening with a mate. I'll report back.

2008-06-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

What a difference a couple of weeks makes, particularly when you have lots of hot days interspersed with a few showers of rain.
Sweet yellow toms on the left, red cherry toms on the right. A good few dozen flowers hiding in there so should have a good crop this year.
There are four cucumbers on this plant at the moment. They grow aprox one inch a day. Home grown are much sweeter than shop bought.
This is the biggest success though, I never expected garlic to grow this well in Scotlands climate. Biggest ones are about 18' 450mm high and growing all the time.
Had a major disaster with the chilli's. I planted them along with the toms in a mixture of compost and cowshit. I think the cowshit may have been too strong for them and most never got past the 2 leaf stage. However I managed to rescue a few and put them into dung free compost and they are thriving.
I have put a rather unusual tropical plant in the greenhouse this year. Its a bug eating Mimosa. This plant, I hope, will eat any green/black/whitefly and any other plant eating beasties.

Rain.

2008-05-28T23:03:00.000-07:00

After having to water the veg every day for about a month, we finally had rain yesterday. Nothing better for your veggy plot than a good days rain.

These are my tomato plants. We had a good crop last year and expect even better this year.
The chilli's are finally starting to show themselves as are the Pac Choi and mustard greens.

This weekend I'll be processing logs and stacking them to dry for next winter.

Italy and an update on the veg plot.

2008-05-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

Everyone does this.
The Colloseum.
Pizza and cappuchino.
Vatican church.
Ferrari dealer.

Got back from our wee coach tour break in Italy on Wedensday. We started from Calais in northern France, travelling through Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Germany and an overnight stop in Switzerland to get there. That was a long day. First night in Italy was spent at Pisa, including a excursion to the Leaning Tower. Second and third nights were spent near Florence. We never took the optional excursion there, deciding to explore the place by ourselves.

Next day we took the excursion to Roma and the Vatican, very nice but very expensive. 5th night was spent at a resort called, Lido de Jessolo just outside Venice. Venice was nice but again very expensive for ordinary working people like ourselves. The last day in Italy we spent at Lake Garda, then onwards to Austria where we spent our last night.

All in all a very hectic holiday, not very relaxing but a great way to see the highlights of a country in a very short time.

Once I work out how to extract pic files from my phone I will post some pics.....

I cant believe the difference in just eight days. Everything seems to have doubled in size due to the warm weather here while we were away. Temps were averaging low 20's.

Should have some nice strawberies in a few weeks.

Garlic doing well. Shallots doing well.Cabbage, cauliflower, beans and brocolli.Japanese red onions, French white and red.

Its all going rather well with no disease or pests as yet.

Rainbows, and a wee update on the veggie plot.

2008-05-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

Heavy rain on Wedensday evening was preceded by this awesome double rainbow. Not too sure if summer has arrived yet or not because its still a wee bit cold in the mornings and during the night.

Not to worry as Sandra and I are off to Italy for a short break on Tuesday.

Heres an update on the veggy plot. Lots of rain and sunshine and we should be eating our own produce by June. Might have a few chickens by then.

2008-04-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

This is as far as I intend to go with the raised beds this year. If its a success, and I think it will be, I'll build another four full size and two half size. I have planted onions, shallots, garlic, runner beans, asparagus, carrots, parsnips, swedes, Brussels sprouts and cabbage.
There is still lots of space for scallions, lettuce and salad stuff, maybe some herbs.
Biggest success is the garlic. I planted about forty cloves and most were up in a few days. There are also onions and shallots starting to burst through. Its still a wee bit cool at night but hopefully no more frost. The garden centre has six types of tomatoes so I intend to buy some this coming weekend for the greenhouse. I had to replace four panes of glass which were broken because of recent strong winds. Once the temps go into the high teens I will plant some chilli and bell peppers, cucumber and melon.

Loch Oich and more wood.

2008-04-14T13:11:00.000-07:00

Went to Loch Oich at the weekend but the fishing was not very productive. Four of us made the 150 mile trip but only one small fish caught, a wee jack pike of about 2 lb.

When all is said and done its still a wee bit cold as yet, another few weeks and the temps should rise and the fish will start feeding again.

My grandson Josh was with us and had a wee accident during the night. He had eaten 2 Pot Noodles, a beefburger, chilli and potatoes, lots of juice and chocolate. Well, he was sharing Dougs tent, and I was sharing Craigs. At 3 am he decided that he was going to barf, but could'nt find the zip and ended up vomiting all over the tent, Doug, the sleeping bags, the jackets etc. What a goddamned mess. Doug just cleaned it up the best he could, and they went back to sleep.

Took a day off work today so I could catch up on some well needed sleep. It was nice being able to turn over and have another couple of hours.

Had a nice breakfast of free range eggs, bacon, tomato, toast and a caffetiere of espresso before going out to the workshop and servicing the Husqy's.

I've been working on another fallen tree. This one is a beech. Its not a whole tree, just two branches, but both of them are 3 feet across at the thickest point.

As you can see one of the branches is laying across the other. I managed to cut the top one on the point of balance without crushing myself between them. Very scary!!

Cant beat a day in a hardwood forest with a chainsaw. Best way in the world of getting rid of your pent up agression. More on this later in the week.

Traditional Scottish steak pie.

2008-03-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Traditional Scottish steak pie was originally a peasant dish using the cheaper cuts of meat ie shoulder or shin. Shin is a very gristly cut but when pressure cooked for about 40 minutes or so makes a nice filling for a pie. I use aprox 2lb or 1 kilo of shin of beef for this pie.
Start by coating the beef in seasoned flour and fry/seal in a small amount of corn oil a hot non stick frying pan, a handfull at a time till its all done. Transfer to pressure cooker and add 3 chopped onions, 2 large sliced carrots, 3 cloves garlic, 3 beef stock cubes and a pint or so of water or stock. Nothing to stop you changing the basic recipe to suit your own taste/culture.
Pressure cook on blue for 40 minutes, or if you dont have a pressure cooker, a large pan with a tight fitting lid for about 2 hours

. Once the meat is very tender, save the liquid and put the beef in a pie dish.
Top with rolled puff pastry. Using a pastry brush give the top a coat of seasoned egg wash.
Put the pie in a medium hot oven for about 40 minutes or until baked.
Meanwhile add some cornflour to the gravy and season to taste.
Traditionally served with roast potatoes and seasonal veg.

Thanks to Max Campbell for the original recipe.

Raised beds project under way.

2008-03-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

Spent the weekend in the garden as opposed to fishing. Weather forecast was bad again for up north so stayed home. Managed to get four of the beds in position as you can see.

The two on the left have each one hundred onion sets. The nearest one has French yellow, the other a French red. If I can get some shallot sets I will do a bed for them also. We love shallots.

I plan to have eight of these beds and a few traditional furrows. Other veg we plan to grow are cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, some beans and peas, swedes and salad such as lettuce, spring onions, Pak Choi, beets and maybe try some exotics depending on the weather.

Last summer here in Scotland was a non event with average temps of about 10c. The previous summer saw average temps in the high 20's.

2008-03-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

This is Meggy, our ESS, had to nail her paws to the ground to get her still for a pic.

The daffodils are coming through.

And that big beech tree might even have some leaves on it soon.

Snow and strong winds.

2008-03-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

Now you see it.

What tree?

This was the view from my living room window this morning.

Never got to the fishing this weekend as the weather forecast was so bad. Snow, storm force winds, sub zero temeratures, not the best for going out in a boat!

Had a call from Roy, my buddy up the road saying that a big old ash had came down during the night, and that we should go " tidy it up", for our wood burning stoves.

So I loaded up the old Husqvarna 266, put on the safety gear and met him at the woods. He brought a tractor and trailer so we pulled the tree into a safe position, and removed the stump.

You have to leave a wee bit of the stump because, as a tree grows it pulls odd bits of slate, gravel etc into the tree, and this can seriously damage the cutting teeth of the chain.

I cut it into ten inch slices while Roy loaded it on to the trailer. Roy has a wee Stihl chainsaw and started cutting up the branches but he hit a stone and lost the edge off his chain, so got the shitty job. Unlucky Roy!! Best way is to cut three quarters of the way through, then roll thetrunk over and cut the last quarter from the top.
We will have to spend a couple of evenings splitting it into burning size pieces. Ash is the best firewood you can get, as it contains only 35% water, even less at this time of year as there is no foliage. Beech is also a good burn, but at 55% water needs a summer of drying before use.

We hauled about three tonnes down to Roys woodshed. Once its processed we will share it out, between our woodstores.

This is a great start for my fuel for the coming winter. A start like this means I can spend more time fishing this spring and summer as opposed to collecting wood for winter.. Can't rest on my laurels though, because most winters we use about 3 tonnes.

Raised beds.

2008-03-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

This year I,m going to try Chinese Permaculture. This involves gridding the veggy plot into raised areas held in place with wooden batons attached to stakes. I have fed the soil with over half a ton of cowdung, chickenshit and compost so hope for some spectacular results. I have'nt used the mechanical rotovator this year because it kills the worms, and worms play an important part in this type of horticulture. This is a no dig arrangement for up to five years.

You use the grass cuttings for mulch, which keeps the weeds down, and also to feed the worms. The worms, in turn keep the soil aerated and workable. This is a crude first attempt at Chinese Permaculture so wish me luck.....

A new start to the Brown Trout season.

2008-03-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

This usually means the start of the trolling season for the serious sporting angler. Next week I,m off to Loch Oich to do some fishing with a few buddies. We intend to do some trolling of dead baits and lures for pike or ferox trout for a few hours on the Saturday, and camp overnight with static deadbaits out till bed time. This will include a barbecue and blowing the froth off a few cold ones. At first light I,ll have the dead baits out before even putting the kettle on. I,ll report back with some pics, hopefully of big fish, but failing that some pics of the loch and surrounding scenery.

2008-03-01T04:08:00.000-08:00

Finished painting the cottage this morning. Took five months of scraping, sealing, sanding, undercoating, topcoating. The landlord will have to get his wallet out.

Another big fish.

2007-11-05T12:59:00.001-08:00

Still cant believe it but it happened. Had a day off work today so decided to have a few hours pike fishing. First of the day was this pristine female pike of 20lbs 2oz. Thats 2 20's in 2 weeks. This one was followed by anther 12 fish weighing between 2 and 14lbs. All fish carefully landed, unhooked and returned.
Tried a method I have'nt used for quite a long time called wobbling. This is essentially making a dead fish look like a sick or dieing fish. You set the bait on a wire trace with a wee bit of lead, cast it out and twitch it back ever so slowly. Deadly!!

Started painting the exterior of the cottage at the weekend. It will need 2 coats. Next visit I,ll put before and after pics.

Big fish.

2007-10-22T23:02:00.001-07:00

I was fishing at the weekend at a wee loch near Glasgow with a good friend and mentor Ricky Macintyre. Ricky has an inovative style of fishing that involves more than simply chucking out baits or dragging a couple of lures aimlessly around.
This specimen weighed in at 23lbs 4 oz and was fooled by a red herring fished in such a manner that it must have looked like an injured or sick prey fish.
She, I know she was a she because for one thing males do'nt grow this size, and also because I was covered in caviar.
This big lass was carefully returned and swam off with no problems.
I find it a wee bit difficult to smile for the camera because I,m never happy till the fish is safely returned.
That night when I got home I had to celebrate alone because Sandra was working. Scoffed a litre of cheap and cheerful French Country Red from Spar then hit the sack
. When Sandra came into the bedroom on the Sunday morning and woke me she said I was smiling in my sleep.
Must have been dreaming about my "affair" the previous day ;-)

Plot empty, freezer full.

2007-10-08T11:19:00.001-07:00

Everything harvested, earth rotovated with half a ton of cowshit. I also have a 250 litre compost box that I,ll spread over it in the early part of the new year. I reckon next year will be even better. Dwarf runner beans under cloche in March, along with a few Swedes, leeks, loads of onions and shallots. Salad stuff, lettuce, spring onions, radishes, cant wait but I,ll have to, roll on the spring.

Painting the white exterior of the cottage just now. Its pebbledashed so will need aprox 30 litres of masonry paint. The landlord asked me to do it and is going to pay me for my time. Its a good wee homer because I can do it when I feel like doing it. No rush.

Not a good week.

2007-09-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

Started my new job last Tuesday, settling in fine.
The job involves painting, gardening, archive sorting, general maintenance and houskeeping.
I,ve got man flu or maybe just a summer cold, so probably will stay home this weekend. Cant phone in sick I,ve only been there for two weeks.
Was supposed to be going fishing to Loch Arkaig Saturday with mates but no point if I,m feeling like a pile of pigeon droppings.
On a lighter note.
We have a great crop of courgettes one of which seems to be turning into a marrow of some kind. The carrots will have to come out soon before they start bolting. Millions of runner beans, some over a foot long, and piles of peas. There are 18 leeks of various sizes and lots of spring onions. Its been a great season with no major problems or disease.

2007-08-23T06:06:00.000-07:00

One of the sweetcorn plants has a cob, its only 2 inches long but promising. There are a few runner beans at eating size so might have them in the next few days. Next year I will grow dwarf French beans
Summer has finally started with temps of 23-25 the last few days. The combine harvesters are out in force making hay while the sun shines and the crops are dry. Unfortunately this brings out the corn lice, not quite as bad as midges or mosquito's but nasty just the same.

I,m not going to use pots in the greenhouse next year. I,m going to get a bricklayer to build me three troughs in there with concrete block. Over the winter I,ll try hotbedding with cowdung at the base and compost/earth above. I believe you can grow pineapples etc in this way. Had a delay starting my new job at Halliburtons but finally got a start date of 28th August.
The job title is Facilities Mainainence Helper. This involves assisting tradesmen, painting, general housekeeping and unblocking shithouses. Dirty job at times but someone has to do it.
Going fishing with a buddy this weekend to Loch Oich. This is the time of year when the big pike and trout are on the prowl looking to fatten themselves up for the winter spawning.
I,ll report back.

2007-08-23T06:03:00.001-07:00

Mulching

2007-08-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

continuous callabresse

Calabresse, sweetcorn and runner beans.

Peeping cauliflowers.

leeks and swedes

Please ignore the dates on pic as I cant be bothered adjusting time/date etc.

Mulching is the way to go. All my grass cuttings go in between the vegetables. This feeds the plant, the worms, and holds back the weeds. Compost as you go.
Dont think the sweetcorn will come to much as it went in late but you ever know, might get one of those Indian summers.

Back to work.

2007-08-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

Recieved a call today from Halliburtons of Montrose that my application for work as a shop helper was successful so I reckon I,ll be starting on Monday. No more long lies for me.

Took the grandson fishing a week or so back. We went to Loch Lochy which is part of the Caledonian Canal. A whole weekend for one fish each. One consolation was that I managed to persuade him to hold the pike for a picture. Pike are a bit scary to a wee lad of 10 as they have teeth like a pirahna.

We are now harvesting and freezing vegetables every other day. They taste much better than shop bought but there is a lot of work involved. Well worth the effort.

2007-08-08T02:47:00.000-07:00

I still have no comments after nearly three months, is it worth writing all this drivel?

Huge cauliflowers and terrorist attacks.

2007-07-16T03:23:00.000-07:00

What a difference in just five weeks or so. Everything seems to be just bursting out of the ground. This is probably because it has rained almost every day for about 6 weeks.
Must buy one of those chest freezers. Its all going to be ready to harvest soon. Happy enough with frozen veg knowing that its organic. Theres a field of peas not far from the cottage and I,m going to pay it a clandestine visit just shortly.

Josh and Ollie were at Glasgow Airport terminal with Mum and Dad when those sick racist bastards tried to blow the place up. Yes, I did say racist. Muslims are the worst racists in the world. They hate us because we are white, because we are not Muslim, because we are infidels apparently. Racists!!
Luckily none of them were injured. They eventually flew to Turkey on the following Tuesday, and got home on Saturday night. We,ll see them tonight when we visit.

Flaming June?

2007-06-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

What the hell happened to global warming?
Its the middle of June and really, summer has'nt started yet.
Its wet, windy and cold outside about 8c.
Still, the veggies are coming on strong.
I have turnips, onions, shallots, and Swiss Chard etc all bursting out of the ground. Might make some soup tomorrow to warm us up.
Thinking about building a henhouse and buying some point of lay chickens. We never buy anything other than free range anyway so might as well get em for free.

This is Olliver, our youngest grandson, he's just six months old. Is'nt he just as cute as a button?
He stayed wth us at the weekend along with his big bro Josh (Jock) we call him.
Jock and I went fishing the local pond but I spent most of the afternoon sorting out his tangles.
Nive to have them, just as nice to send them home lol

I,m off to sit by the fire and watch a movie. Its "The Sheltering Sky" with John Malkovitch and Debra Winger. Its a wee bit arty farty but I'm in that kind of a mood. Might have a glass or 3-4 of Cote du Rhone.

The Bridge at Millau and the Pont Du Gard

2007-06-09T06:49:00.000-07:00

This is the Pont Du Gard in Provence. The initial bridge must have been very well built because through the centuries they built another two on top of it. The Romans of course, those dudes knew how to build.

Bridge in the sky and my Peugeot 307 estate.
Awesome.

We had a holiday in Provence last year. Stayed at a place called Rochefort du Gard for one week out of two. Real nice peacefull relaxing holiday. While we were there we went to see the above mentioned bridges. I have a special interest in bridges as I worked as a painter for 15 years on the Tay and Forth railway bridges here in Scotland.

The ribbon of steel which forms the highway in the sky is 270m (885ft) above the river, but the central pillar is 343m (1125ft) high. [quote] from the offical website.

We also visited Italy staying a night in Torino and 3 nights in Arenzano just north of Gerona. I had the same dinner every night. Pizza Capricciosa, side salad and several bottles of Moretti beer. Italian men tend to spend a couple of hours over a beer and were quite shocked at me having one every 15 minutes or so :-0

Gordon

Something eating my turnip tops.

2007-06-09T05:03:00.001-07:00

Just moved the sweetcorn from the greenhouse to the plot.

This is Meggy our English Springer Spaniel saying"What you lookin at boy"

New fence
Calabresse

Chewed turnip tops

When we returned from holiday 2 weeks ago some critter had eaten all my young cabbage, cauli's and sprouts. I assumed that it was rabbits as the dog was away on holiday as well.

Yesterday I found the culprit, a male pheasant strutting around pulling chunks off my Calabresse. I dashed outside like a madman and chased the devil away. He was back within half an hour however so I decided that he would have to be shot, and of course eaten.

This morning I was ready with the air rifle, when he proudly strutted up from the forest complete with wife and six chicks.

Could'nt shoot him now could I?

So I went to see my farmhand buddy up the road a wee bit and he gave me some temporary fencing materials.

If this doesnt do the trick I,ll have to kill him, chicks or no chicks.

Rosslin chapel

2007-06-08T01:28:00.000-07:00

After reading the Da Vinci Code and watching the film we went to see the wee kirk at the village of Roslin near Edinburgh. If you,re interested in architecture this is the building for you. I,ve never saw carvings and detail like it, not even in the South of France.

Unfortunately its under a huge canopy just now as the outer structure (sandstone) has been absorbing water. Back in the 50's some conservation group painted the inside with a waterproof paint to stop the water permeating through and dripping on the pulpit etc.

This led to the water being held in the stone and made the problem worse.

I could have told them that would happen!!

No point in me rambling on about it though as all the experts info is on the web. Its a lovely building with a lot of history.

Rosslin is just about 2 miles from Ikea so dropped in there on the way home for Swedish meatballs and coffee. Then as usual Sandra dragged me around the place and spent a fortune.

Gordon.

Our wood burning stove.

2007-06-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

The central heating in the cottage is run on kerosene. This is a very expensive fuel, 2 hrs in the morning and 3 in the evening worked out at about £50 a week to run.

We only use it for showers and hot water now that we have our woodburning stove. The cottage is located at the top of a beech forest hence the name " Beech Cottage" and the landlord owns this land as well. He has given me permission to tidy up any fallen branches of which there are plenty. I have a wee Husqvarna 136 chainsaw and a trailer and spend a lot of my spare time proccessing beech logs for the stove. The stove, used properly heats the whole house. Sometimes, even in winter we have to open a window because its too hot. The house is built of engineering brick and the area behind the stove stores the heat for many hours after the fire has gone out.

I had to build a log store to stack and dry the logs for winter. Wood can be so wet that water splashes in your face when you put the axe through it. Wood will burn wet but messes up the chimney so it has to be swept more often, it also has to "cook" on the fire before it generates any heat. This can take up to 20 minutes, so its better if the wood is dried.

Hardwood is best for a stove as it burns longer, but if I come across some dry softwood I keep it by for the spring/autumn when we only need a small fire for an hour or two in the evening. Firewood is measured in cords. A cord of wood is a pile of tightly stacked logs measuring 8 ft x 4ft x 4ft. We used 2.5 cords last winter so I intend to have at least 3 cords stacked by the end of June. It has to be in by then to give it sufficient time to dry as its last in first out. Get the picture?

If you have a stove and are not sure how it works, put in a lighted firelighter, some kindling, some logs with the vents open. Once it has established itself, shut the vents. Every two hours or so add a couple of logs, it will keep your whole house warm.

At the moment we are hardly using the stove as the heat through the windows keeps the living room at a comfortable temperature until early evening. Most evenings I start a fire at about 7pm, and load it up when we go to bed at say, 11pm. The room is still warm when we get up.

Gordon

FISHING!!

2007-06-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

Here in Scotland we have a wealth of good fishing. Big pike in almost every loch south of Ullapool and some of the bigger rivers. Trout in almost every loch and river. We also have some coarse fish including carp, roach, rudd, tench, dace, chub, barbel and many more.

I,ve had a few big pike the best one being a fish of 36lb, 44inches long. This old girl, like all the fish I catch, was returned safely with the minimum of stress/pain.

Pike are not easy to catch especially in the bigger lochs. Some of the Scottish lochs have up to 65 miles of shoreline and possibly only 3 or 4 miles of that suitable habitat for Esox Lucius ( thats the Latin name for a pike) are'nt I clever ;-) You need to spend a we bit of time on these big lochs to find out where the pike live.

This is the boat that my lovely wife bought for my 50th birthday last year. She is a British built Seahog Hunter. She is equipped with a power tilt and trim 40hp Yamaha 2 stroke outboard, Yamaha 22kg thrust trolling motor, sat nav, ship to shore marine band radio and fishfinder. I have a Cannon mini troll downrigger for fishing the deeper water. Her current name is Chrissie11 but that has to be changed. Its unlucky to change a boats name but I found a ceremony for doing it. Unfortunately this requires the services of a man of the cloth and I do'nt know one yet but....................

I also developed a cool anchoring system that allows me to anchor where I want to be without drifting off the mark. This involves two bow rollers, one on the bow, one on top front of the cabin, a hole drilled in the windscreen and a cam cleat. Enlarge the pic you will see what I mean.

The type of fishing I do depends on the time of year. November through to April I mainly fish dead or livebaits. The rest of the year I mainly troll lures such as Rapala. These are pulled along behind the boat at slow speed in 20 feet of water or less. This is a very effective method not only for pike but also truot and salmon which also are returned alive. I love the hunt and the chase but cant get around the killing part. In the UK salmon are in decline. No-one should kill a salmon particularly a female that can produce thousands of fry, still it happens.

I am considered to be what is commonly known as a "coarse angler" because I use coarse methods ie; baits and lures, but I seldom kill a fish, whereas the game angler, who only uses an artificial fly tied from feathers and a single hook, is considered the gentlemanly game angler. The game angler is the chappy that you see walking along the bank with a brace of hen salmon most likely gaffed by a willing ghillie who is more interested in his reward of a bottle of malt whisky than the decline of the species that provides his living.

Game anglers get right on my very last nerve ;-(

Gordon

2007-06-04T15:04:00.000-07:00

Most of the hard garden work is done by my Qualcast rotovator. This baby makes short work of the 70 or so M2 that is my vegetable patch. Here she is.................

No kidding this old contraption churns up the ground like a 6 furrow plough whatever that is!

I bought her off Ebay for £50. The seller lived in South Queensferry near Edinburgh so I just drove the 50 miles or so and picked her up myself.

She starts first time every time and drags me around after her like a large dog with a small child.

I plan to make/adapt a ploughshare for the back to ease furrowing in my old age, both my brow and the plot.

Gordon.

Fishing and gardening?

2007-06-04T01:19:00.000-07:00

I'm Gordon Mills. I'm 50 and so is my lovely wife Sandra.

We recently sold our house and moved from the big city (Dundee) thats in Scotland, to a wee rented cottage between Forfar and Montrose. Sandra is a senior staff nurse at Ninewells hospital in Dundee. I was recently made redundant as the multi-storey car park which I was helping to construct was finished and no other work was available in my area. So at the moment I am unemployed. Fortunately Sandra earns like large so its not a problem at the moment and we still have some money from the sale of the house.

I'm using this spare time to get the garden in order. The house and ground that we rent is huge as in 50mtrs by 150mtrs. The previous tenant used the ground as a sort of car breakers yard, buying and selling cars, breaking them up for spares etc. It was an incredible mess.

We did our best to tidy it up, cut the grass, planted flowers, shrubs etc but it was a massive undertaking for a working couple.

Last autumn, I think, once the landlord ( a farmer) realised that we were interested in tidying up the place he employed a landscaper to give the ground a basic shape, and put in paths and larch borders around the flower beds and a small vegetable garden. We were to take it from there...........

Sandra does the flowers and shrubs and stuff and I do the veg. We sort of share the grass cutting and tidying up.

I had a go last year but was basically clueless. I never put in manure, I left it too stoney, I planted too closely, I planted whole packets of seeds at once, I made every mistake that you can make with a vegetable garden. We had pestilence on a major scale with snails, slugs, caterpillars, afyds, rabbits you name it we had it

The only thing that was a success was the broad beans. 40 plants with hundreds of pods and millions of beans. We perhaps ate about 2lbs of them and gave the rest away. I think we also had half a dozen radishes and a few shallots. I was telling a guy at work how chuffed I was with the broad beans and he said ' awa min ye kid grow they in gravel' cheers Dunc!

This year things are different. This year I read books about allotment growing, general vegetable gardening and tried to work out how I went wrong. Living this far north and at this height (600ft above sea level) you need a greenhouse to get your plants started. Seeds put in the ground in March lie dormant till May or forever.

So the lady next door to my mother in law decided she did not want her greenhouse any more, and asked her if she knew anyone who would dismantle and remove it for her. She gave me a call to ask if I wanted it, I almost bit her hand off. I went down next day and dismantled it piece by piece, pane by pane. I was stacking the glass against a huge terra cotta pot and as I carefully placed the last pane the whole bloody lot went down breaking 8 panes. Pane in the arse I thought. The local glazier no kidding, his name is Doug Glass, replaced them for me @ £2.50 each so £20 for that ballsup.

Next was decide where to put it and went for the south east corner of the garden. There are two rowan trees here that would provide some shade and shelter from the south easterly winds. I made a concrete base and with a little help from our youngest son it was built. I couldnt wait to get started so off to B&Q for some pots and seeds. At the moment I have cucumber, courgette, chilli, capsicum, sweet corn, gourds (marrows) swiss chard, coriander, rosemary and chives in the greenhouse, and broad beans, runner beans, turnips, Swedes, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, calabresse, red onion, white onion, shallots red, white and French, springonion and Romano lettuce.

Its all going well, I,ll keep in touch.

Gordon.