18 Hours

is all it takes for the Island to be transformed from this:

to this:

Yesterday was a beautiful, still, if fairly cold day: wonderful for working in the garden. So I built a raised bed for vegetables and gave it it's first coat of preservative. A few days previously I had built the large composter to take the contents of my plastic ones which were full.

The first thing I had to do was gather the old plastic composers and put some very heavy bags of peat and so on inside them to stop them blowing away. When the wave photos were taken the wind was only gusting at about 46 mph (74kph, 40 knots, Beaufort 8). 

Now it's way past that.

Ho hum.

Memories of a Lewis Day (so far)

Tomorrow morning I leave for Glasgow and the start of my journey to my Other Home in New Zealand.   Looking at the weather forecast for the rest of today and tomorrow we are promised strong gales and torrential squally showers and rain.  I took these photos within the last half hour but already the skies are lightening as the sun rises but darkening at the same time as the grey rain clouds come across from the west (these photos are taken facing east).  This is one of the reasons I love the Hebrides: the unpredictability of the view from my window.

The three photos were taken in a sequence about 10 minutes from start to finish as the sun rose over the horizon.

Within a couple of hours the wind had risen to gale force and the sea at The Braighe when I went into town was quite rough:

I met Gaz for coffee and lunch at The Woodlands; my favourite watering hole in Stornoway's Lews Castle Grounds.  Believe it or not it was very busy but everyone is behind us.

In the afternoon I popped over to Pat and Dave's for a coffee.  Their eccentric cat Misha wanted first to go out and then to come back in.

This evening a friend is popping in and by the time I get to bed the cases will be shut and I'll be ready to roll in the morning.

All's Quiet on the Eagleton Front

At just after midday CJ and Jo left for Ullapool and a leisurely journey taking about 4 or 5 days to get home through the West Highlands and the Lake District.  After a wet morning the rain stopped and a breeze got up and the sun peeked out occasionally so I manage to get the washing all done and dried and some maintenance done outside before dinner.

It's a strange feeling after 6 weeks with CJ and then CJ and Jo here to have no one in the house tonight except me.  A friend will be here tomorrow night and then I have about 10 days to get things done in the house and garden before I leave for Glasgow and France and a wedding in Callander at the end of the month.

Yesterday I managed to sort out all my travel arrangements and also discovered that my flights for NZ had all been altered too.  Hopefully all is now sorted and I can relax.

The upshot of all this is that I've hardly been in Blogland since last Friday.

Hopefully I'll manage to make up for that over the next 10 days!

In the meantime I'll leave you with a wave:

Storm Force

I have just been on the phone and during that time I was watching the sea in Bayble Bay below the house. I will never cease to be amazed at how the sea can change within minutes. During the call the sea went from long long rollers reaching into the Bay; to huge breakers breaking on the shore; to waves breaking (yes, really!) in the middle of the Bay; to sea flattened by the storm force winds so that not a wave broke even on the shore and every little wavelet as far as the eye could see had a white crestlet - the sea actually boiled. BBC Scotland's Heather 'The Weather' has just said that the winds in Stornoway in the last hour reached 75mph. Enough said.

Unfortunately the combination of the poor light and the flatness of the view made photography well nigh impossible. However I did get a photo of the cliffs on the other side of the Bay as the waves and spray climbed up them.

Apparently all but three of Calmac's ferries have been cancelled today and, OK, so none of us like this weather when we have to go out but watching the sea is magical. Who would want to be anywhere else.

A Southerly Gale

We were promised a gale from the South peaking at 1300 hours today and we got a gale, it was from the South and it peaked at 1300 hours. The view from the buffeted Study was quite spectacular with the long rollong breakers coming into the bay: