August 3, 2012
The Glasgow School of Art

Scotland’s Outer Hebrides - where we recently took a few days’ break - are a long distance away so a night-stop in the fascinating city of Glasgow is well worth it.

One of the major attractions of the city is The Glasgow School of Art. Built...

November 20, 2011
The chestnut leaf breakout

My workstation here in the Gers overlooks a magnificant horse-chestnut tree, aesculus hippocastanum (the conker variety, not the sweet chestnut one). It provides shade from the blasting sun and in April it transforms itself with countless bunches of pink-tinged white blossom. Bit by bit...

November 19, 2011
La garde-robe

My schoolboy humour and enjoyment of vocabulary get equal kicks from the medieval toilet suspended on the back wall of Trapeharde. Although the date over the front door is 1809, it’s fairly likely that the shell and structure of parts of the place pre-date that. The toilet alone is...

May 24, 2009
Surrounded by orchids

It being May, the orchids are back and this year there seems to be an abundance of them. Perhaps this year’s unusually wet spring in the Gers favoured them.

In previous years we have counted between 12 and 15 different species of orchid either on our land or very close by. So...

June 9, 2008
Meet the Soays

Our corner of the Gers is wonderfully hilly and we’re lucky to have a steeply-sloped 2 hectare (5 acre) field behind the house which is just too steep for a tractor. It’s ideal for sheep and inside the 800 metres of fencing that we’ve surrounded the field with we keep Soay (pronounced ‘sow...

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