inshriach

Last time Richard Jefferies was here he looked at the game larder and said,

‘Please fix that – it makes me cry a little bit every time I see it.’

So I am.

A few weeks back I noticed a company was starting up in Aviemore by the name of Bygone Drives so I looked up the address and went to introduce myself. Isobel was in the process of putting together a classic car rental fleet, an MGB roadster lurking in the garage, a very pretty Mk2 Mazda Mx5 and a Range Rover sport on the driveway and a tidy silver XJS V12 up for sale to make way for a few more sensible and rentable motors (namely a Daimler 250 V8 and some form of Aston).

A good car chat ensued and a couple of days later I found myself heading for Edinburgh to collect an old English white 1953 split screen Morris Minor convertible, bought unseen. It turned out to be a really nice once, smooth engine, good brakes, nice ride, obviously much loved. Being early it has an Art Deco styled dash (in bronzey gold) and the interior of this one has been fully retrimmed in burgundy leather. Its meagre original seats have been binned in favour of comfy but not incongruous modern ones and it has a new hood, which, even though its designed like a vintage pram, kept most of the rain out as we parped our way into the city.

Its nearly 60 years old so you have to think, then wait, then ease your way through the gears. There’s not a lot of grip or go and 55 is flat out. Stopped in it people want to mother it, it makes them smile and wave and come to chat and everyone has a moggie story or some moggie trivia.

Then the weekend started to get odd. By 10.30 I was in Queensferry with a bottle of wine, 2 deckchairs, a chainsaw, 3 rolls of gaffer tape and 2 giant inflatable bananas. Myself and the Moggie had fallen in with the organising committee of – and been drafted in to compete in – the Edinburgh raft race. By midnight we had drunk the wine, chopped down a tree to make paddles and come to the conclusion we were seriously short on buoyancy, time, skills and materials.

Morning came, the sun was out and the moggie promptly broke down, top down, bananas proudly in the air. A clutch rod many million gearchanges old had snapped. Intrepid mariner engineers such as we were we whipped the rod off, failed to improvise another – first out of rope then out of heras fence, then found our mate Donald with a welder who stuck the old one back together and we made it to the canal with minutes to spare, whereupon a kindly stranger, seeing the moggie disgorge our raft ingredients, solved our buoyancy problem with 4 large water cooler bottles. We built a raft in the few remaining minutes, hit the canal, looked totally ridiculous and unstable but made the final.

The drive back to Aviemore was in pouring rain (a lot of it with the roof still down) but the Morris didn’t miss a beat. This is really its natural habitat, trundling the B roads round the highlands. It is certainly £120 odd per day worth of fun if you have the right excuse and, dare I say it, it’s my kind of wedding car.

Next up – Lewis.

Inshriach airspace has been unusually busy this last fortnight as Warner Brothers prepared aerial scenes for the forthcoming Batman sequel. An ex US military Hercules has made regular low rumbling flypasts and will apparently be filmed landing on a local B road (permission was refused to use the A9). There is also a charter helicopter, a private jet and a little single prop plane, some or all of which have been dropping black clad stuntmen into the woods a couple of miles away, around Lagganlia gliding club. Last week one of the stuntmen was blown off course and went through the roof of a holiday cottage. Batman had to be rescued by an old fella with a ladder.

If it wasn’t a beautiful day and I didn’t need to fix the game larder and it wasn’t Heb Celt Fest this weekend I would be up there wheedling a job out of them.

Last weekend was the Cairngorm Soapbox race, the fastest and longest gravity race in the UK. As a bit of variety from our usual business we had 40 of the competitors camping here in the field recently vacated by our main stage. The technology ranged from shed built rattlers to wind tunnel honed carbon fibre streamliners and for all the effort there were a few surprises in the final running order (well, the guy responsible for Aston Martin’s 1990s Group C Chassis did win, but apart from that).

I headed for the workshop first thing Saturday morning and the first team to come my way were the works Triumph motorcycles team with this extraordinary looking blue lozenge, its wheels canted so far in at the top it looked like a 1920s illustration of speed. A splodge of welding and fabricating saw that complete the day intact. Another three teams came through with varying degrees of bent and broken from qualifying then it was up the hill to watch them rattle down at 75mph…

Next year I’m in…

This is some time coming because I have put a lot of writing into the Insider on the festival blog so I’m going to keep it to a few pictures here and will probably come back and edit this and be more effusive. It was an extraordinary weekend and an absolute pleasure to see so many old friends, people who have stayed here, married here or stayed in the yurt amongst the revellers.

An amazing artistic and photographic response is gathering on the Insider Festival Facebook page.

Here’s to next year.

With just over a week until the Insider you would think that we would be dedicating all our time and resources to preparing ourselves but projects are like buses round here and for the last fortnight Inshriach has been the base for the filming of 500 Miles North starring Joe Morgan (Vampire Diaries) and Matt Ryan (Criminal Minds) and directed by Luke Massey.

Expect to see a lot of familiar locations if you have visited here, plus shots inside the house and round the estate, not to mention one particular vehicle from the Inshriach Abstract Motoring department making quite a considerable appearance.

I have been a bit neglectful of this blog of late, the reason being that May has been the month when all matrimony broke loose at Inshriach.

First past the post were Josie and J who married down by the river then christened the newly turfed main stage / main wedding field in style with 4 ten metre diameter tipis, arranged in a diamond formation with fires and fairy lights and a stage. (This photo courtesy of Joe Maclay, click on it for the full effect).

Ruth and John (spectacular overland travellers themselves, having driven a Land Rover from Cambridge to Sydney) chose two of Red Kite Yurts finest, a hand made Kyrgysh 42 footer for dinner and dancing and a 24 footer for food and a bar. We resurrected the Insider awning along the veranda for the ceremony and then danced reels in a circle around the band (ord ban the band).

And then came the Langans. Their occupation of the house was somehow shorter and yet more thorough. They were very fortunate to hang onto the giant yurt. John has been a regular here over the last few years, his band have played both Insiders so they know their way round and gathered among the guests were some very fine musicians. The moments I remember – Bryan Benner singing arias in the squash court, Dave Tunstall and Hazen Metro both piping John up to the ceremony in the woods, a kitchen full of fiddlers, Chandra singing Malian wedding songs, the Banana Sessions making for an amazing, stomping wedding band, a man who spent the entire weekend dressed as a tiger, dreadlocks, dogs, loads of smiles and a crowd of genuine, open and lovely folks. And Richard Muirhead.

That’s not to say that the other weddings were less than lovely but this one was close to my heart. I wish all three couples the very best. Inshriach now plays host to a stag party (friends) and 2 weeks filming before we hope to get everyone back again for the Insider.

Im going to do something I very rarely do and copy a big thank you across from the Insider Festival website and put it here too.
This really is Rufus White in the process of building our Insider website. No joke. He and Molly and Mathew have pulled a stormer with it. All the animations and squirrels and everything has been hand drawn by him and there can be no doubt it is now Victori-on.

Rufus will wearing another hat at the Insider, that of the mobile silversmith and jeweller. You will find him and his wiry apprentice plying their trade, taking commissions and making beautiful things during the festival. In the meantime if you would like to get in touch with him for anything just Telegram us at the Insider.

The photo we half-inched from a recent series of portraits by Helen Abraham