A New Car

With great sadness, we've sold our Freelander.  It was a great car, with superb handling on our potholed, switchback, single-track roads, a great driving position, and the comfort of knowing that, when we were out in bad weather, we were in a vehicle that could take almost anything the elements felt like throwing at it.

Land Rovers have a poor reputation for reliability.  In our experience, this is totally unjustified.  In the six years we owned the Freelander, the worst that happened was a faulty electric window.  So it was a great car, until we started to look at the economics.  We don't use a car much preferring, whenever possible, to walk, so the £460 annual road tax and high insurance had to be added to the 32 miles per gallon of diesel and the high cost of parts.

As a Coastguard, it did have its uses, particularly when the team was practising off-road driving and the CG Toyota HiLux got stuck.  The Freelander pulled it out, several times.  But we couldn't justify keeping the Freelander once the Coastguard days were over.

So we sold it and, at the risk of our street credibility, bought a Hyundai i10.  It's a super little car, reminding us of our days when we drove a Mini 850.  It does 60+ to the gallon, and the road tax is £20. Whether it will last on these roads remains to be seen.

Blondie Moves West

The sunset sky last night - this picture was taken at about half past eight - was distinctly angry, the clouds over Ben Hiant reflecting what was probably a beautiful sunset as seen from Portuairk or Sanna.

Dawn came this morning at almost exactly half past six, with the sun rising just to the left of Beinn na h-Urchrach.  There was hardly a breath of wind across Kilchoan Bay but, as the day has continued, it has steadily increased, blowing steadily from the southeast.  The forecast for the next 24 hours is for the wind to continue rising, to about Force 6 by tomorrow morning.

This fishing boat has been been steaming around off the Ormsaigbeg shore for the past day.  She's the Boy Paul, registered in Coleraine.  She may have been fishing - she's a prawn boat - but her track was erratic, and she kept stopping for several minutes at a time.

Like everyone who is upwardly mobile, Blondie the Sparrow has moved to the west end of the village.  She was last reported on The Diary by Julie Allcock who lives in Pier Road - see post here.  Blondie joined a group of about thirty Sparrows and Chaffinches feeding on the wall of our terrace.  The food's good but it's a hazardous occupation: a Sparrowhawk is preying on the assembled throng.  It'll be interesting to see whether Sparrowhawks prefer blondes.

Football Progress

Kilchoan Football Club have now won four games in a row and guaranteed themselves a place in the quarter final -at the the cost of some very tired legs and one potentially serious injury.  Follow progress here.

Buddleia

There's a large buddleia in the front garden of one of the croft houses along the Ormsaigbeg road which has suddenly become the focus of a crowd of butterflies.  It's the ordinary, lilac-coloured buddleia.  In contrast, the buddleia in our garden, which is a pinker shade, has been in flower for a couple of weeks and the butterflies have shown no interest in it.

When we passed the bush this afternoon it hosted a dozen or so Peacocks and two Small Tortoiseshells.  The Diary's memory, which is famously hazy, is that, in the 'old days', the numbers used to be the other way round, with far more Tortoiseshells than Peacocks.  Certainly, Tortoiseshells have a problem, which is explained at the UK Butterflies site, here.

As can be seen from the second picture, Kilchoan is suffering another day without any Kilchoan sunshine.  The morning started grey but, with a Force 2 wind firmly in the north, it was only a matter of time before the sky would clear.  This it did by lunchtime, but by then the wind had became considerably brisker, much to the butterflies' discomfort.

KFC Make Great Start

Kilchoan Football Club have started their competition well - see the latest news on their Facebook site here.