Owlswood Lodge - 4 Star Self-Catering

Folk Festival and Fishing

May is Folk Festival ‘time of year ‘in Orkney and although we only went to one event (out of a possible 24) this year, it was excellent. We went to the Orphir Community Centre Ceilidh on the Friday night. It was sponsored by The Noust which is the local pub in Orphir and sells good pub grub. Any way , the acts came from far and near but my favourite of the night was the local girl Fiona Driver accompanied by Graham Simpson .My favourite piece by her is the her fiddle set ‘Graham in a Tent ‘ www.fionadriver.co.uk .‘Crooked Still’ came over from the USA. This band played swing band type music with plenty of old time fiddle tunes and some blues too. We also had the treat of listening to Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller who were the winners of the BBC Young Folk Award. Both are studying Scottish music at Glasgow. It was just a delight to listen to them. The evening passed quickly with us enjoying ballads, jig tunes, bag pipes and swing and blues. The Ceilidh which followed was led by ‘Alive and Jiggin ‘. Fast and Fun!! Orkney Folk festival runs for 4 days every May. (Thursday to Sunday) www.orkneyfolkfestival.com

The following week Vince, Hugh, Norman and Billo set of to Sanday for their annual fishing trip. The weather was good, the fishing was good, the cards were good and I do believe the rum was good too! Vince is not home just now to ‘report’ the fishing technicalities but I hope you enjoy the photos. Bye for now, Carol

May Newsletter

May is here and the weather has been fantastic. Warm sunny days and we seem to have missed all the rain ‘doon sooth’.

Vince and I went to North Ronaldsay on the 11th May on one of the Sunday Excursions run by Orkney Ferries over the summer. Vince is there often on the boat he works on (Earl Siguird) but I had never been before. Although the island is only 13miles circumference , we took our car so that we could see as much as possible. However it was such a lovely day, we only walked around the point at the light houses, had a picnic and quickly dropped into the pub for small refreshment.

The journey takes 3 hours on the boat and then the car is lifted off the boat onto the pier. A good chance to check the exhaust! On the way to the Lighthouses we saw the famous North Ronaldsay sheep and their lambs. The sheep are only kept in fields for lambing, the rest of the year they are beyond the sea dykes and live on the shore eating sea weed. It was great to see the old beacon lighthouse, topped with its huge stone ball close up. This light house was built in 1788 and was recently on the ‘Restoration Village’ programme on BBC1 (summer 2006), winning the Scottish round and coming third in the final. Although it did not win the programme, it did receive some grants and scaffolding is now in place for the restoration work to begin. It was used until 1809 and the light was created by oil burning lamps reflecting off polished facets of glass. The ‘new’ light house is the tallest land based light house in the British Isles and the only Light house in Orkney offering guided tours. The buildings around it are also having work done on them so that they can be used as holiday accommodation including box beds and a living heritage site.


After our picnic, we popped into the pub, which you can imagine is very small and cosy and then next door to the post office – same lady serving in both. While sitting outside in the sunshine we saw her again – this time feeding some calves. I was delighted then to have a chance to bottle feed a 3 day old calf.

My final treat of the day was seeing a Minke whale from the boat.

Hope you enjoy the photos.

Carol

www.northronaldsay.com

February Snow

This was the lovely early evening view from owlswood in February while feeding the sheep.

February News 2008

Hi, It has been a long, long project – we started building Owlswood Lodge in July 2006 doing much of the work ourselves and assisted by an ABDS (Agricultural Business Diversification Scheme) grant. We can hardly believe that it is now 2008 and the Lodge is finished (well almost – still need grass sown but that is another story) and has already had some guests. We have been overwhelmed by the amount of enquiries and interest that people have shown and already have 27 weeks booked for 2008! After 18 months of building Vince is looking forward to taking it easier this year and doing some fishing. He has already booked a few days out in Sanday in May fishing the Bea Loch. This has become an annual event with friends and family all looking to catch that ‘prize’ trout. Vince’s record was a beautiful 8 ½ pound brown trout in 2005, caught on an ‘Anorexic Alexandra ‘fly. Last year the most successful flies they used in Sanday were ‘Hummungus’ and ‘Pottinger’s Palmer’ with Hugh from Greenfield landing two brown trout approximately 7lb each . As for me I will be happy to get out and about on my Highland Pony, Alexander, again when the weather improves. We have had lots and lots of rain but on 2nd of February we had a picture book winter scene on waking up. Our Dogs, Maggie who is a Border terrier and Roo, a flat coat retriever cross lab, have had a great time. The snow was beautiful and fluffy and ‘crunchy’ to walk on and we had nobody in Owlswood Lodge to enjoy it! Anyway, bye for now until the next newsletter, Carol