inshriach

Its been a busy few weeks so there are a few updates to convey. Congratulations to Pippa and Angus on having a baby boy, Culbin, and to Henry (who designed this website) and Adeola who also have a little boy, Louis, and made me a very proud godfather.

Courtesy of a recent film based in a 1970s newsroom, we now have a projector and a 6 foot screen set in an unpleasantly beige wall which will go into the barn where there are lots of sofas and a woodburner. There is a cinema opening in Aviemore but for some bizarre reason word is going round it will only show 12 rated films. With the advice and support of a few discerning film aficionados the Inshriach film club will have much better showings, then be full of children and probably show 12 rated films the rest of the time, provided the projector survived the journey north.

Thanks to Hannah and Zoe from the National Park our grant applications are finally in for the barn conversion and the woodland Earthship camping scheme and our planning applications will be ready in the New Year. The cinema may move to the squash court when the barn gets underway.

With a big New Year party only a few weeks away its time to get on with the bothy.

This week we hosted a party for the BBC at which there were 20 plus children running all over the house. Every few minutes we would get a snippet of wisdom on how many mirrors there were, or on the steps into Mrs Blacks bed, then a servants bell would ring and they would run off. The names given to the rooms are loosely based on the first owners of the house, the Black family, and taken from the servants bells, which all work. A nod is due here to Dennis Severs house in Spitalfields.

Hannah is back and between working on the drawings for the barn we have redistributing some of our weirder acquisitions, this monolith will be part of a treasure hunt and many other things are collecting in a huge pile for a possible treehouse, we also have a number of boats and will shortly have a movie projector for the squash court.

With the snow starting here are the latest photos

Following on from the piece in the Guardian we have been listed by BBC Homes and Antiques Magazine as one of the loveliest places for a winter holiday. Unfortunately I cant link to it because its a magazine piece so you have to go out and buy it.

We hosted our first photo shoot, Gisela and Emma adding a touch a fur clad New York glamour to the Inshriach forest, one of their pics is shown above.

While thinking about fur coats we revisited the highland wildlife park for the first time in 15 years. Its no sprawling Longleat but its manageable and lovely with its suitably massive upland animals, yaks, bison, wolves, siberian tigers, snowy owls. I would like to keep the mini red pandas and furry alpine foxes.

We had a big party in the house on Friday, 55 people, catered by us. The brownies, fruitcake and stew will keep us going for weeks. The next foreseable time this will happen is a wedding coming up in September.

Post BBC we have a farmyard full of amazing props. Those of you already planning on coming for the buildathon in the spring have something to work with and any other friends who fancy a sabbatical from bad news and a few months living in the woods will be very welcome.

Its time to thank the lovely people at Alastair Sawday Publishing, they have been super supportive to us getting Inshriach off the ground, given us this listing, been full of advice, good PR and quality introductions and their discerning approach is reflected in the enquiries we receive. If anyone reading this is considering getting themselves into a similar situation I couldn’t recommend them highly enough.

We also have them to thank for this in the travel section of Saturdays Guardian…

Is the farm flat possessed?

Having spent all day searching Inverness for plastic skeletons, skulls on strings, prop bones and halloween teeth I got home to a call saying there are bones coming out of the hot tap in the farm flat. My best guess is that a bat has found its way into the system. There are a lot of bats in the Cairngorms, pipistrelles and horseshoes, they swoop in around you fishing at night and squeak between the rafters in the barn.

We had the house rented last week, 2 families with lots of food, fishing and clay pigeon shooting on Rothiemurchus, since then it has started snowing in earnest, this pic of Loch Morlich was a beautiful break in yesterday’s largely challenging weather.

Restocking the loch had taken on a ceremonial significance. The means fell into place when I found myself working just round the corner from Craig Ireland’s organic trout farm. Craig is a lovely guy, full of fishy enthusiasm. He has huge tanks bubbling with spring water and trout, a growing sideline producing delicious smoked fish and he was happy to come round on a Saturday afternoon to spoon in a few hundred lively silvery little fellas. They are mostly yearlings, 4 to 6 inches long to put on weight for next year but there are a few dozen big monsters to splosh about. They set off in a clockwise direction, rising, exploring, probably looking for the side of the tank in which they have spent the last 2 years.

We have a few families and lots of youngsters arriving on Tuesday, I would like the fish to settle so rather than catch them we will chuck handfuls of food at them, lulling them into a false sense of security.

Thanks to Dan Light for keeping me connected with the world through the media of online Scrabble and his US election coverage, the only coverage worth following.

The onset of Autumn has shown the skill of Jack Drake, who lived here until 1970 and was responsible for the Nursery Garden next door; the trees round the house are now rich reds, oranges and yellows mingled in the evergreens.

No wonder the highlands is such a popular place for filming. This week has been a roll call of beautiful locations, Glenfeshie, Pattack falls, Laggan. The kids have been climbing, rafting and paddling among other activities and in the course of this I have got to know expert guides for winter climbing (the Cairngorms being world renowned), canoeing and mountain biking so we are putting our heads together to offer these to guests.

Between other jobs a few of us were called upon to be demons.

Last week there was an early dusting of snow on the hills and today we have had a day filming at Loch Laggan. Loch Laggan has a great pale sandy beach at its east end and tremendous views up to the mountains, the crazy spires of Ardverikie house (Glenbogle in Monarch of the Glen) poked out from the mist mid morning and the light and cloud and haze on the hills changed all day.