The external work on the cottage gave us the incentive to use the sunny weather to complete some other outdoor jobs put off in recent months .
The small garden area needed a good tidy up after the winter storms which had further destroyed some of the trellis. Five panels of trellis have now been replaced and this has made a big difference. The containers which I planted up in the autumn with crocuses and tulips are flowering well and been commented on by visitors parking in The Bell car park.
Inside The Granary we have decided to do away with the separate, fridge and freezer and replace them with a stand-alone fridge/freezer. This will give us room to put in the dishwasher ( the job for our next visit). Removing the fridge and freezer proved a harder task than expected but with help from a friend they were eventually levered out from underneath the work surface. The new fridge/freezer is now installed and working.
I also did repairs to the skirting boards in our bedroom which had in the past got damp which had softened the wood and caused it to smell! The use of wood hardener followed by wood filler has improved the look considerably and we now plan to give the whole room a coat of paint next time we visit.
The excellent weather also provided plenty of opportunity for long beach walks. Shown below is the beach at Peppercombe, one of our favourite walks following the footpath through the woods from Northway down to the beach.
Perhaps the highlight of the visit was when my offer to assist in loading 14 llamas into a horsebox was accepted and I arrived at Vicki and Kevin' smallholding at 6:30 in the morning. They have sold their herd of llamas to focus on other animals and 14 had been purchased by a land-owner in Dumfries. Based upon the experience of that morning I will stop using the phrase 'it is like herding cats' and replace it with 'it is like herding llamas'!. Initially all went well and the llamas were duly penned in close to the luxury horsebox where they were then tempted with food to go up the ramp and enter the box. Luckily I had the job of maintaining the integrity of the pen in case the llamas attempted to backtrack. This meant that I was the other side of the fence or hurdle to the 14 llamas! With some strong persuasion and shoving from behind one or two were encouraged into the horsebox however, on several occasions the rest of the llamas decided that this was not a good idea and looked for potential escape routes. This meant that the two Kevin's standing in the middle of the group were knocked around a fair bit as panic set in. Fortunately injuries were limited to bruising and a broken pair of spectacles.
Eventually by keeping them calm and splitting the llamas into smaller, manageable groups they were all aboard. The task for Vicki was to sort them into the three separate areas within the horsebox in which they would travel - shuffling llamas is no easy task!
Finally around 8:00 the doors of the horse box were closed and the llamas set off on their long journey to Dumfries where apparently they are all now settled in.
It was certainly an interesting experience and probably one I will never repeat!
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Photo by Kevin Woodward
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