Ok so the weather is beating us a little bit over here so it gives me a good chance to sit and write another update with the added bonus of having a cup of tea and a warm lunch!
A couple weeks ago I helped build the stacks on our own crop, you can see one of the torcheons at the bottom of the blog, another new skill to add to my growing collection, wonder if I should consider getting a croft soon!
I had a team meeting over on Skye with some familiar faces and some new people too. I was driving over as it was going to be my first trip home since I left for Uist. We set off fairly early to get to the ferry and both of us had forgotten to book so it was an anxious wait in the queue to see if we’d get on and it wasn’t looking good at all with 6 cars in front of us. I was already picturing my mum being miserable as I phoned her to give her the bad news. However someone was smiling on me as we made it on, barely, they squeezed us in and no more. I reckon those ferry lot would be amazing at Tetris.With the team fast assembling they confessed to the real point of the meeting. We were to hike up to 3 sites in the hills and to carry all their equipment off the hill. The Skye lot had set up a camera to follow the Sea eagles that lived out on the hills and now was the time to bring it all home. Once we had hiked out to the point where the gear was to be dumped, teams were divided up and I paid for my earlier luck by being put in the furthest away place.I was a man on a mission though, lots of important people were here and I wasn’t keen to be found out as a wimp that day. We fired in and got out to the site which was full of van batteries. Now I didn’t know the weight in a van battery till that day, I assumed they’d be fairly heavy, definitely bulky and a bit of a nightmare to carry up the slopes. I was a bit surprised to find it would’ve been impossible to carry the battery by hand. Luckily someone had brought one of those backpacks you can just tie everything onto a little shelf. I volunteered for the first trek thinking that my time scuba diving and lumping a cylinder around might be a benefit. It guess it kind of was but for those who scuba dive, try carrying a cylinder up and down hills for an hour and a half! Anyway upon dumping that load I had to go back and get more, most of the smaller stuff had been packed into backpacks and cleared so that left… another van battery! I can honestly say I have never pushed myself as much as I did that day and to finish on a positive note of the van experience, it was absolutely brilliant to know that when I had to dig deep I wasn’t found wanting, I definitely took great heart from that.PLUS as a bonus we got taken out on a boat tour, I was shattered and not too impressed by the blips on the horizon which I was assured were sea eagles, yeah ok… maybe they are eagles, big eagles… and getting bigger, wait what is the driver doing? Yep the driver stopped pretty close to an eagle and dips his hand into a bucket, pulling out a mackerel. As he puts it up in the air more eagles appear. When he launched the fish into the sea a juvenile bird circled above us and swooped in to get the fish, no more than 2m away from the boat. It was totally breath taking. I’d call it a once in a lifetime opportunity but he pulled out another fish and did it again! To see these beautiful birds which were wrongly forced from our shores, you just can’t put that into words. Luckily there was someone with a camera about so hopefully the photos will circulate and I can prove how close we got.So yeah that was great and an excellent way to bring the hard work into perspective, the RSPB is very much a family organisation, I kind of expected suits who don’t muck in but when you have the head of North Scotland helping out too, it draws everyone in together.Headed home, it was a typical weekend in the Jones household. Leaving at 3:30am to catch the first ferry on the Monday wasn’t so nice, especially with my mum crying her eyes out again (jeez mum pack it in) but when you’ve got nice clear roads and are belting out some classics on the ipod it makes up for a dark and wet drive.As promised here is a photo or two of my time so far and there are some exciting developments in the pipe line that I can’t share yet.
