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.
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150 years and a day.
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.
Railway Records – The Movie.
Huge thanks to Fergus Thom for coming along and dealing with our nonsense to put together this great little film of the railway coming apart and also to old pals of Inshriach and long time stars of the Insider, the John Langan Band for lending us some tunes to go with it. Next week our very long suffering architect Hannah Buss is coming to finish the drawings (not just the station, we intend to turn the farmyard into an accompanying complex by converting the steading into a house, kitchen and new bathrooms and turning the chicken sheds into somewhere people can stay) and we have now got only a few weeks before the dream team of Jon, Wolfie and Jacob head north to see how far we can stretch our meagre budget…
Its time for some more Funraising, thank you very much to the people who have already supported this most hairbrained of ideas, we couldn’t have done it without you.
More good things – One Pot Borrowed.
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.
Good things – Inverhall marquees.
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.
Railway Records update.
Thanks to a truly amazing and generous group of friends the Dalnaspidal station is now dismantled, denailed and back in the yard at Inshriach. Thanks as well to the Strathspey steam railway for giving us the building, to those of you who sponsored us, to Fergus Thom for coming by to get some of it on film and Aaron Sneddon for the aerial shots. You can see the dismantling over on the Funraiser facebook page.
In a fortunate turn of events the lovely brackets from the front of the station have turned up in amongst the piles of railway ephemera in Boat of Garten, as have the original gutters.
Late availability – 20% off Inshriach House bookings until the end of September
Between the Insider Festival and the Railway funraiser we have slightly taken our eye off the ball as far as late summer bookings are concerned so we are offering 20% off all bookings on Inshriach House until the end of September. That includes photoshoots but not shotgun weddings. If we are going to rebuild the station we need to fill these weeks and raise some money so please get in touch if you have a reason to take a lot of friends on holiday. That means £2400 rather than £3000 for the full week and a mere £1800 for a long weekend.
And if the weather carries on like this who needs to go to the south of France anyway.
Homes and Interiors on the Bothy Project.
This edition of Homes and Interiors magazine has a lovely article by Gabriella Bennett on staying at the Bothy Project. She happened to coincide with a wedding so finished up Saturday night in the unconventional situation (for a a peaceful woodland retreat) of dancing the night away with hundreds of strangers. Watch out for us in the next edition which is going to have a full feature on the estate and all of the oddball things we get up to. This week you can also find us featured in Trout and Salmon magazine and the Strathy has run a piece on the Railway station move. Press-tastic.