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The Gun Room is now the office, sage green, and Im enjoying carving up the study to fit the washing machine, dryer, a sink and the deep freeze. It makes a welcome change from decorating.

I will post post a video of this operation and if i really mess up the plumbing it stands a chance of being quite entertaining.

An antique cupboard door and some recycled floor boards are now an Edwardian looking bath panel so the existing bathrooms are properly finished and between cursing my cheap jigsaw I can start thinking about the next two. Gus and I recovered a cast iron bath from a house being refitted in Feshiebridge which will look great in bathroom 4, now christened the Housemaids bathroom (‘Housemaids Pantry’ is written under the shelves in swirly Edwardian writing). The rest we need to find.

Im doing the gunroom / office transition and there are deep claw marks in the plaster, the door frames have been knawed and there is matted dog hair in the splinters. What kind of hound lived here. Hmmmmm.

Antony from Scotts Castle holidays came by today and he took a very pragmatic look around the house before offering his advice.

Move the office to the gun room, which wants redecorating. Move the washing machines to the office, which has already been decorated, put in a sink. Replace the dining room with a bedroom with 2 x 4 foot doubles and move the dining room to the hall, find or make a table for 18. Take Uncle Arthur’s bedroom and stick a bath in it. Turn the old laundry room in the servants quarters into a bathroom.

He is right on all of the above and we had kind of been ignoring it, flushed with pride at finishing the bedrooms and the existing bathrooms.

So the new Inshriach, a little delayed but soon available to rent, probably with 18 beds, 5 bathrooms, and if anyone fancies helping me out over the next 3 weeks I will love them for ever.

Bring on some real coffee and break out the sugar soap.

I promised back in January to post a video of the birdfeeder outside our kitchen window and its finally here. Thanks to Charlie McKerron for letting me lift the music from the latest Session A9 album, Bottlenecks and Armbreakers, which he recorded here last year.

Huge thanks to Jon, aka Tired, who volunteered to come up for a fortnight and lend a hand. We have redecorated 10 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, the small drawing room and the downstairs loo and still had time to buy a knackered French Foreign Legion Landcruiser we didnt need and get it stuck on some not very challenging obstacles. Video of this to follow.

Also thanks to St John (a regular) and Jonny (who works for Farlows), both super keen fishermen and lovely guys. They made a marathon after work trip from London, arrived at 5am Friday and were on the river by 10. Their prognosis? Excellent pools for Salmon, Sea Trout and brown and while a bit early in the season, could be great. The same opinion has been put by our neighbours at Rothiemurchus, that we have best fishing on this part of the Spey and it has just been underfished and undermaintained for a decade. Time to learn riverbank maintenance.

It might be the snow but outside the kitchen the feeding frenzy is unusally busy this morning. Two red squirrels, including a young one i haven’t seen before, robins, siskins, great tits, blue tits, green finches, a blackbird and a pheasant are all in for a feed. I will try to make a little video.

This is Inshriach, a small estate (200 acres is small apparently) 5 miles from Aviemore (not quite) owned by my friend Walter and his family. I’ve seen dozens of beautiful pictures, hundreds even, but I asked Walter for one that best captured the essence of the place and this is what he gave me.

This is a map of the estate itself, which is marked out by the red line. You can see that it runs a fair way along the south bank of the Spey. This, I’m told, is all good fishing.

I added this final map for my own reference really, in terms of understanding where Inshriach is situatedin the grand scheme of things.