Road Conditions

This is a useful website: http://www.trafficscotland.org/lev/index.aspx

For instance, the cameras on the A87 are just over the hill to the north of us; and the A9 cameras at Drumochter give an indication of how things are there. Though perhaps one should not rely on them too much, as the BBC News website refers to chaos on the A9 at some unspecified place in the Highlands.

Still, it is quite reassuring to look at the pictures and see that the roads are not totally covered with snow.

The Refreshment of Spirit Afforded by a Truly Competent Tradesman

Joy unconfined, Donald is here, with his little spade and a heat gun. He has made an excavation at the leaking pipe place; and found that it is not frozen, but burst probably because some sensor in the Nibe had failed to tell the pump to stop pushing, when a blockage of ice next to the Nibe prevented any water getting through. You may well say why have the Nibe virtually outdoors. Well, it is just one of those things that one does. The little gun is now unfreezing the pipe in the cupboard.

Waterworks

He said we would be lucky to get away with no bursts indoors; and lo he was right. A line of drips has appeared just over the dining table, from a burst behind the plasterboard on the north side of the landing. So now we have a new hatch there, rather as Roy has always wanted. I think the tally of leaks is five: the popped pipe to the washing machine; the pipe from the well; the one upstairs; another one in a pipe feeding the top of the Nibe; and, finally, one in the utility room, in the wall above the washing machine, where the leaking water started running into the electric socket and tripping the main fuse. There will be another hatch in the utility room wall, perhaps with a useful cupboard in front of it. We are keeping the pieces of burst pipe as a reminder of the Awesome Power of Ice.

At the end of a long day, all that seems to be left to do is to replace the pressure sensor on the tank, as it seems to have been knocked out by the frost. Donald will be able to get a new one next week. In the mean time, Roy has been shown how to get 100 litres of water at a time by turning on the pump and watching for the pressure to get to the critical level. A great improvement on no water at all; and I shall be able to wash my hair.

Some good news, though: the sitting room and living room floors are positively cosy and there is perceptible heat in the study, the hall and the shower room floors. I am walking around barefoot with No Ill Effects.

Chains

We went up the drive to put on the chains and I took some pictures too, though not of the chains I see. We thought it would make sense to put them on before their need becomes urgent.

More snow

We were pleased to see that Klarg is having a warmish time underground, presumably working away, not that we have been able to send him anything recently. Oh, sudden thought: we must OBVIOUSLY put a chapel of relief somewhere over his roof, with direct access, for situations such as the one we now find ourselves in. I wonder if there is an optional extra of this sort already available, or if we will have to get it retro-designed.

Highland Housekeeping - midwinter

Well, we are perfectly at ease boiling up snow for water and washing ourselves and our dishes in a teaspoonful; but this is a new challenge successfully completed - being in the middle of of putting together a dish of spoonbread when the electricity goes off, and IMMEDIATELY coming up with the solution: "No problem - I can fry it in spoonfuls."

Also Remembering Where We Left The Torches.

The electricity came on again after two minutes.

More Pictures of Snow

I have just been out in the snow to take more pictures. I didn't go far, as I was alone and I have been rather uncomfortably aware in recent months of reports of people going out for little walks and then being found as corpses some time later.

More snow at the Wood

I found lots of deep snow, well up to my boot tops. It is sticking very tenaciously to the branches of the trees. It is the sort of dry snow that doesn't make snowballs, so we would have difficulty running the Eurostar trains here; and I am thinking of opening a ski slope.

In one place, the deer had clearly been scraping the snow away to get at something to eat, which seems to have been dead bracken.

In this sort of place, in this sort of weather, I recommend reading Michelle Paver's books about life in the Stone Age. I recently read a review of her books which said that they were a good thing for modern children to read, as they show how it is possible to exist without pretty much any of the things we would regard as essential.

Photos will follow, when Livy has stopped cleaning her stairs.

Interesting Times, in the Chinese sense

We are at the Wood for New Year. The roads were pretty good, though there had obviously been a lot of snow and the fir trees in Perthshire, in particular, were looking very spectacularly snowy. The glen road was not bad, either, though not quite so amazingly clear as the time I came with Livy. The only difficulty was when we courteously went into passing places for other people to pass, and then had to dig ourselves out of them. Moral: always carry a sturdy shovel when travelling in the Highlands in winter.

We did not even consider driving down our track, and rather regretted not having taken the sledge out of the attic and brought it, as everything has had to be carried down to the house on foot, of course.

Here, we found that there had been a power cut and, more importantly, all the taps, and presumably all the pipes, are frozen. Since then (nearly 24 hours on) the electricity has been off again, and the pipes are still frozen. One of the pipes to the washing machine has sprung off its connection; but, so far, the only other freeze-related water-supply occurrence has been the discovery that there is a leak in the pipe from the well, fortunately outside the house, and controlled by turning off the pump.

Donald is off on holiday until Thursday but is aware of our problems and will be with us then. How he will deal with the leaking water supply is His Problem, and we just hope we will not have to throw too much money at it. So until then we are reminding ourselves how much worse it could be, hoping that we don't get a practical demonstration of exactly how much worse, and hunkering down. (Literally, when it comes to those functions for which having a working water system is so useful.) (Let's just say that there will be part of Roy's projected grass plot that will be quite nicely supplied with nitrogenous and other solid fertilising matter.) We are reasonably well prepared for this sort of thing, mentally, because of Another Place; but the new experience is melting snow for water. (I have a feeling they did that in one of the Olivia Fitzroy books, perhaps The House in the Hills.)

At the Wood in snow

The trees look perfectly lovely and the mounds of snow are of the perfect, powdery, just like icing sugar variety; so in spite of the cold and the difficulties, we are enjoying the beauty here.

Geology

Our friend Richard the geologist has not been able to visit yet. But the new British Geological Survey website is full of information. Go to http://www.bgs.ac.uk/opengeoscience/digMap50viewer/ and then navigate eastwards from Loch Hourn for the Wood. If you use sufficient magnification Loch Quoich and Loch Poulary are labelled. The bedrock is Upper Garry Psammite Formation and the superficial layer is mostly hummocky (moundy) glacial deposits - diamicton, sand and gravel. Our own superficial peat bogs are also marked.

Psammite is sandstone. (The psammead is a sand fairy.) Who told us we were on granite?

Perhaps we should be excavating our horticultural grit onsite, just as we got our road-making material there.