inshriach

Last weekend we let it all hang out with our second Backwoods Bonfire party. This time we were lucky enough to hang onto Paul Millards beautiful 42 ft yurt, the scene of 3 weddings at Inshriach this year, and to persuade John Langan (who got married in it here back in May) to put in a final gig before he disappears to India for 6 months.

We warmed up in the yurt with our old friends Ord Ban, again wedding veterans in these here parts, and copious measures of mulled cider.

Then it was up to the Backwoods stage and once again I have to thank the old stagers from times even before the Insider, Dom, Ben, Captain Bob, Piers and Ali who brought a van from Derbyshire full of PA and good chat. Jimmy, Jonah, Greg the Absinthe and everyone else who mucked in, again, it couldn’t be done without you. Under the watchful eye of team Backwoods – Ross, Polly, Gordy and co – it went off with a bang. John played a stormer of a set in the woods, then fireworks, then our old favourites Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers kicking brassiness out into the night and Gojar on the decks till the end. It was a line up of old friends and an absolutely excellent party.

I’m going to backpedal through time a bit so as to introduce a series of works we have initiated (to run alongside all the other works we haven’t finished). I will return later with tales from our last wedding of the year and of bonfire night.

For both environmental and financial reasons we have been deliberating on how to update Inshriach and how to wean it off its appetite for oil. Wood boilers, whether fired by pellets, wood chips, logs or waste wood are big business these days so we weighed up our options, put our savings in a pot and plumped for a brand new wood pellet system, a 60kw Nordic Bio Energy boiler, fed by a vacuum system which will draw pellets through a pipe under the drive from an 8 ton hopper on the other side. Two new and efficient tanks will give us the capacity to keep up with endless big baths for wedding parties and we can set the ball rolling for installing central heating upstairs at some point in the future.

So as soon as the wedding was done the first of our outstandingly useful bonfire party crew arrived and the shovels came out, we rented a minidigger and got started on the trench for the vacuum and footings for the hopper. Its going to be a narrow window in the weather before it gets too cold and because of bonfire night, cider and minor operational difficulties we have so far achieved precisely one large hole.

The hopper is eventually going to be disguised as another Edwardian ice house / game shed. The chimney needs lining on the house, the cellar stripped out, new heating pipework needs to join onto the old heating pipework, the big oil tank can then go and the new system will have an electric backup. That still leaves oil for the aga but go in there now when its getting cold outside and its deliciously toasty in the kitchen.

Then there is the matter of generating our power sustainably and true to form it’s all happening at once. We have been planning solar for a while so, again taking advantage of the end of the rental season, a 4kw photo voltaic array is planned for the big house. To top our renewables inventory for the week my old friend Jimmy Whitmore (now a sustainable energy inventor at KraftMaus) stayed around for a few days after bonfire night to chat over some ideas we have been having for a small Hydro Electric generator to power the workshops, alternative fuels we could be running the Inshriach fleet on and suchlike.

I will report back on the various hurdles, installers, contractors, holes, progress and inventions over the next few months, hopefully with better photos.

On the 5th November we are holding a Backwoods Bonfire party. Buses leave from the Old Bridge Inn any time after 5 and cost a tenner, when you get here our old friends the John Langan band will be playing and we have been lucky enough to find ourselves with the same gigantic Red Kite yurt that John got married in earlier this year, in the same spot. Then we head for the woods for a barbeque and mulled cider to hear three time festival champions Woodenbox with a Fistful of fivers, then some fireworks, Gojar on the decks until midnight and all back on the bus in time for last orders. You can read more about it and see if you can share a lift to the pub by looking at the facebook page.

Whats not to like about that?

Last week the film circus returned to the Highlands with Emma Thompson’s new period drama feature, Effie, starring Dakota Fanning. Effie tells the story of the affair between the Victorian Art critic John Ruskin’s wife and John Everett Millais and there were plenty of costumes that would have looked quite at home at the Insider. I was tasked with taking Petal the Land Rover out to the west coast, along with a couple of cohorts from Aviemore, where I was detailed to the camera department for the week and given the challenge of not getting stuck, flooded or lost. Here I am executing an inelegant reentry after a river burst its banks and the days set had to be speedily evacuated.

Last weekends spoon carving course was a great success, Wooden Tom did a fine job of making sure everyone kept their fingers and got the basics required to carve a spoon. The 6 folk who came along all left promising to go out and buy themselves axes, knives and gouges. Three of them have booked for the bowl carving course we are running on 15th November (which is already sold out) but more courses can be put together on a pretty ad hoc basis if you have 6 people up for it, and £40 seems very reasonable for a whole day of crafty, carvy and rewarding entertainment.

Friday was a quickfire run down to Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Academy for the opening night of the Resident : 11 exhibition. The RSA have supported a number of artists through their Residents for Scotland programme. They have a network of predominantly art institute partners across Scotland and contemporary artists get to spend time in research and production in unusual locations. The RSA have partially funded the Bothy Project as part artwork and part miniaturised embodiment of what they are trying to achieve.

After seeing pictures of ourselves and the build plastered across the hallowed walls of the RSA we are coming back to earth by figuring out rainwater harvesting and filtering and we need get our hands on enough larch to clad the gables.

Last weekend saw another bothy building delegation descend on Inshriach, now the wall cladding is on, the side windows are in, complete with beautiful oak sills and sides, and most of the insulation and lining has gone in. The architectural detail that has gone into the design is starting to tell in the overall proportions, the views through the building, the floor to eaves windows, the custom made, diminutive and beautiful (if probably not very practical) folded gutters and the silvery cladding. It is a traditional bothy with a modernist twist. We are two weeks off the next build party when we hope to have it clad, windowed and watertight. There is a much more extensive blog and photo gallery of the build here on the bothy project website.

Meanwhile, just along the valley at the Lazy Duck in Nethy Bridge, David and Valerie have just finished their fabulous Woodmans hut, living proof that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Their hut is situated on the old woodmans trail that runs through their forest and is mostly built with timber thinned from its immediate surroundings. The hut has great views of the Cairngorms and a veranda out front perfectly suited to Appalacian relaxation. Inside it has a box bed, a stove, oak flooring and a great little kitchen, outside there’s a bush shower, compost loo and fridge (ie a stream). Its very cute and I highly advise getting in to stay there before they realise what a bargain it is or it gets famous and is booked out all the time.

Our second last wedding of the year took place a few weeks back so my congratulations go out to Lucy and Simon. We do seem to be picking up the alternative end of the Aviemore wedding market, each one this year (7 to date) has had its own distinctive style due to the personalities and choices of those involved, this one was pretty frantic for the last 48 hours but worked out to be a lot of fun. This was the first time Bygone drives have been brought in for the wedding cars, the first time we have used this particular marquee and lighting company and the first time we have gone for a photo booth in the tipi.
Ord Ban played again, they are proving hard to top for the music, Taste of Moray were super professional helping get the house sorted while everyone was at church and then doing fine things with the food and Helen Abraham once again took amazing photos (these rubbish ones are my own work). You can read Helen’s take on the wedding and have a look at a few rather better photos here on her website.
Without turning this into a sales pitch (we dont really do sales pitches) if you want a wedding at Inshriach we charge a facility fee of £1200 on top of the full weekly rental. We don’t charge corkage or put a commission on anything, we can introduce you to all the best people for lights, tent, staging, music, food and everything else you need and we are pretty laid back about people camping if they want to (there will usually be a small per head charge for that). And that’s that.