Painting the Fence

James and I have spent the last three days painting the new fence outside the cottage, which was built for us during the lockdown. We are painting it dark green, which looks good amongst all of the green foliage. Fence painting is hard work and it took me a while to get used to it. The weather has been very warm which is good for drying the paint quickly, but initially made me feel very hot and bothered. Several times I went into the cottage to cool down but if I stayed inside for too long James came looking for me. The first day was very slow going for me; we had to paint the sides of the boards as well as the front and back, and give the fence two coats of paint. We calculated how much we had each painted and James had done three times as much painting as me. On the second day I was a bit speedier and by day three I was really into the swing of it. I wasn’t hating it any more and even felt a sense of satisfaction as we progressed along the sections of the fence. James was still faster than me but I was nearly keeping up with him. Lots of people stopped for a chat and gave us words of encouragement as they passed by us on the path. My legs are quite bitten by midges which have now come out for the summer season, not during the day luckily because of the sunshine, but in the early evening they were fierce. My legs are also scratched by gorse and I have a few skelfs from the wood. 

We have now completed about two thirds of the painting and are having a wee break before finishing on our next visit. To reward ourselves for all our hard work we went on the wee one hour boat trip on the Selkie that we did with David and Chanel last year. The lady at the kiosk insisted that we wear survival suits as well as life jackets. I wasn’t impressed by this at all, as they seemed far too bulky and warm, but when we were out whizzing up the loch in the boat we were glad of them! We saw common seals, a sea eagle and a porpoise, so we were very pleased that the wildlife had turned up for us! The skipper explained to us that spring has been late this year and the loch is a still bit cold for mackerel just yet, which means that there the dolphins and seabirds who eat them haven’t arrived yet either. I think he said that the water is currently about 8 degrees C and it needs to warm up to 10 degrees C before more fish will arrive. We then went for dinner to the Ceilidh Place; it was nice to be back, but the menu is still very short (it was shortened when it reopened last summer when the first lockdown lifted) and didn’t feel very special. I hope that they make it more interesting again soon. 

Today we collected our hire car, which we will have until our car is repaired in about a week. We thought that we would have to hire it from Inverness because there are no hire cars currently available in Ullapool, and this would have meant taking the bus to Inverness with all the stuff we would need for the next week including our hill-walking stuff. I asked for ideas on the Ullapool Community Facebook page and someone suggested that we approach one of the Stornoway car hire firms (over in Lewis.) We did so, and were able conveniently to pick up a car at the ferry terminal, and we will put it back on the ferry next week!