inshriach

In order to make way for the Railway station a double garage in the farmyard is going to have to come down. That in itself is no great problem except that it carries 10 not very well orientated solar panels and I don’t want to put them back onto the station once it is up. The woodshed that services the yurt and beermoth is also in the station’s path so on nice days we have been building something that will perform both functions, and get maximum solar gain both for the panels and for seasoning the wood in the shed.

[Read more…] about The solar wood shed.

Back in May we had another shoot at Inshriach, the fruits of which are now creeping into shops and magazines and spreading across the net. The current catalogues for Dune and Bertie, as well as in store and film campaigns are all Inshriach based.

They were shot by Esther Hasse, organised by the agent Terrie Tanaka and produced by Location Scotland and I will post more of the pictures and films as they appear.

The eagle eyed amongst you will spot locations in the house, by the loch and down by the march pool in the Dune campaign with the Bertie shoot focusing its efforts at the yurt. To top it all Monty has a new career and a couple of the more unusual vehicles from the Inshriach stable had an outing.

[Read more…] about Dune and Bertie photoshoots.

And in a week of full blown press and publication, Vinny Lee’s new book Homes from Home ‘Inventive Small spaces from chic shacks to cabins and caravans’ has just come out featuring the Beermoth. Its a beautifully researched book and full of ideas if you are planning on going down the route of building something small and unusual.

For the French speakers out there our second outing in Marie Claire Maison this year has just hit the news stands, this time featuring the Bothy Project.

Yesterday marked 150 years to the day since the Inverness to Perth Junction Railway (and therefore Dalnaspidal station) ran its first service. It was also my 35th birthday. My very long suffering and architecturally talented friend Hannah Buss spent the weekend here and we have finally reconfigured the station to how we want it and knocked the plans into shape.We have also done the drawings for converting the farm steading and the chicken sheds into houses and come clean on the various off grid holiday nonsense we have built over the last few years. Today all of that has gone off to set the ball rolling for the pre planning process.

Now we just need a surveyor for the barn, an engineer to spec a substantial retaining wall and a pot of money to get things moving so if anyone can help us with any of that we would be very grateful.

Our favourite chef Allan Heaney has now opened up his One Pot Borrowed restaurant in the Old School at the Rothiemurchus visitor centre. Never has a man taken such pride in serving up a fine meal. It is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings and you should go there and eat something special. For bookings phone 01479 780200.

After a bit of an early season debacle with a marquee we then got the rest of the year (2 more weddings and the Insider) straightened out with the help of Inverhall marquees. Their tents are lovely traditional canvas tents with all the right details (nice round wooden poles, oak toggles, wooden doors and natural ropes), the prices are spot on considering the quality and their tents were immaculately put up by a super professional team of guys. Use them, and if you would like to know who not to use I can tell you that as well.