Fires, Floors and Chimney Sweeps

The Chimney in the Stone Caravan is clean! It draws. I can light a fire at last without smoking out the cottage and most of the neighbourhood. Even the mice had little hacking coughs. Turns out it is first time it's been swept in over a decade, and as it has been principally a coal fire, it was pretty grungy.

Progress is in fits and starts, as bits of the jigsaw fit together.
The chimney sweep visit was one of the key pieces, as didn't want to start painting or laying the new floor until I was sure that the soot was shifted and wasn't going to come down in one almighty drift one stormy night.

I've now stripped the building, shifting all the furniture, crockery etc, into the back room (that's the half of the cottage that is going to fall down), removing all the carpets (5 layers in some places) and chipping out any areas of rotten plaster, ready to give the whole thing two coats of old fashioned lime and milk distemper. The milk proteins bind the lime, and make the surface technically wipeable. So painting is the second piece in the puzzle.

Then there is the floor. The original flags were long ago replaced by concrete, which is practical but ruddy cold on the feet and arse. With needed to find something cheap, warm (ish), mouseproof (they'd think rush mating was a housing scheme), and suitable for sweeping daily (again, to deter the rodents). Oh, and capable of withstanding a huge range of temperatures and humidity.

The previous tenant's solution was carpet - lots and lots and lots of carpets, laid one on top of each other. We stripped it all out, layer by layer, taking the wool rugs down the hill (hoping to clean them when we get a nice spring day) - the older stuff went on a HUGE bonfire.
Now, thanks to IKEA we have 15 boxes of pressed bamboo floor click-n-fit flooring, sitting in the back room over xmas, to adjust to the humidity.

Next installment - learning how to paint with milk...

How the Cottage Got its Name - Take Two

On a mid 19th Century map of the North bank of the Tyne River, just a few miles from the ancient town of Hexham, you might have traced the outlines of two large villages and one Hamlet: Longhaugh, Longhaughshiel, and B******.

B***** is now a thriving little town - with real shops, and a postoffice (for how long! )while Longhaugh, on the hill above it, has entirely disappeared,, from the map, from sight and from memory.

This Darwinian extinction is probably due to the arrival of the railway, which used to run along the river valley, bypassing Longhaugh and stopping in Bellingham. The railway went in the 1960s, the ironworks it suported even earlier, but that choice of station saved B*****, and destroyed Longhaugh.

Between the two villages was a huggermugger hamlet, called Longhaughshiel, clinging to the steep slopes above the rail line, which was once home to 5 familes, and up to 50 people. The rubble of those homes is still to be seen, surrounding the only survivor - my own little three room cottage.

In that the story of that name the whole history of Northumberland can be traced...

(The next installments has Romans and Belgians in it - you have been warned)

How the Stone Caravan got its name - Take One

It all started with an email. Bing!







From: ruggedlyhandsome.young-parent( @) remotenorthumbrianvillage .co. uk
To: Atropos.X.Lee (@) GlobalCorporate-r-us. com

14/08/2006

Atropos,

I just wanted your thoughts on Longhaughshiel (the little house with no amenities!).

The current tenants who have been there for 12 years are moving on to pastures new so I need to find a replacement before they go.

Realistically is it something you may be interested in?

On the plus side
- amazing views
- spring water on tap
- blissful isolation to write in
- near your sister & niece!
- v.cheap

but... - No road (you can get close but a bit of a trek)
- No electricity (although we are looking into a wind generator which we'll put in if not hugely expensive)
- No phone (you'll need orange)

Basically think of it as a stone caravan in one of the nicest spots in the country and you'll not be too disappointed.

Let me know your thoughts. If you definitely don't want (or are even are just thinking about it) let me know as I need to start the process of finding a replacement. There needs to be some sort of a hand-over which is why it is useful for me to find someone before November.

Hope all's well,

Ruggedly x


Of course - there's then the question of the real name - Longhaughshiel ("long - haf - sheel") - and that story is the start of the gruesome and gory history, not only of the little house, but of Northumberland itself!

And that is for the next installment!

Slight hiccup

I have a 10 kilo sack of powdered lime distemper (mildly caustic) sitting on my bedroom floor in West London.

Which is strange, considering the delivery note clearly states that it was to be sent to Northumberland.

All I have to do now is convince the supplier that 10 kilos of caustic powder(however ever eco-friendly) is not ideal luggage for a single girl on the 1.30 train from King's Cross to Hexham, particularly when she is also laden with a rag-rug, 250 candles and Christmas Presents for 10, and ask them to sort it out.

They ain't answering the phone....

Alas – the mule story is not as cute as people must think!

I’m feeling guilty. The votes are in, and the mule won. Alas, as much fun as I had with the my borrowed mule, it isn’t quite the animal asset I suspect you imagine.

This is the mule I borrowed for the weekend from a neighbour>

It’s a little workhorse of a farm vehicle, and the only 4-wheel drive to hand, essential to get equipment to the cottage, and carpets, quilts, etc back down for cleaning. It has a top speed of 12mph, and ambles along, very like a mule, utterly unfazed by mud of inclines, at about 5.

The route is from base camp (my sister’s rented house) is circuitous – and starts on a very nasty bend on a main road popular with speeding bikers – it’s only for 100 yards, but that’s quite some distance at 5 mph, and it’s a hair-raising few moments. At least it’s only two left turns, one onto the road, one off into a neighbouring field - but of course that’s two right turns into the path of oncoming traffic on a sharp bend on the way back. (Readers outside the UK and Australia should reverse those turns, of course. Left, Right. We drive different here.

I’ve counted them out and I’ve counted them back in again. Gates. There are 7 gates between the road and the cottage, all of them vital to stock-keeping, all of them surrounded by mud, all of them requiring that I stop, put the mule in neutral (or switch off – quieter, saves diesel), jump into the mud, open the gate, start the mule, chug through, switch off, jump down, close gate, jump up – etc, etc. And two of those are double gates. It’s not a chore. You just get used to the idea that walking would be faster, and relax. The mule is for heavy transport – not for speed or ease or keeping you dry.

So the route (with 7 gates) is through a neighbour’s field, then onto a grassed over disused railway embankment that cuts through the steep oak wood, which falls away dramatically to river on the right. Pheasants and rabbits run along side the mule, not particularly spooked. They don’t like it, but at least no one is shooting at them.

Then, half a mile along, a sharp turn to the left, and what feels like a 1 – 1 (it’s not, but it feels like it), pull up the side of the hill, under the eyes of nonchalant rams, skirting the remains of the Romano British village, and through the trees finally to the cottage.

And the day begins. Usually with coffee before the work starts.

The mule is on temporary loan, and more often than not I have to walk. I will have thighs of adamant by the Spring!

I’m sorry this wasn’t a fascinating account of a Woman and her Donkey, and I will make up for any disappointment with some history in the next update.

Update from the Stone Caravan - what do you want to hear?

(In about 50-60 years the cute pink blob to the right will be my landlady)

It’s cold, it’s damp, it’s smoky and it’s over run with spiders. And I think I am in love.

It’s been 4 weeks since I picked up the keys, and although I haven’t slept overnight yet (more on that later) as I sat alone by the dying fire on that first Sunday afternoon, listening to the chug of the stream (more of that later), I felt at home.

The next morning, as I drove back to station to start the long haul back to London I glanced up at the hill, the trees parted to reveal the cottage - with a rainbow arching over it. Aw!

There has been so much to take in (and juggling work etc with the project has been so hectic) that it has been hard to know where to start with this journal. So I’ll keep the update bite sized, and try to focus on a few aspects at a time.

Actually – you tell me. I’ll take a show of virtual hands. which of the following topics would you most like to hear about first?

• Finding eco friendly paint
• Transport by mule to and from the Stone Caravan
• Fire/range/chimney issues
• Floor - past, present, future
• The big bonfire
• Damp, damp and more damp
• Spiders
• Mice
• Spiders, Mice and Sprays....
• Falling down - me and/or the caravan
• Skin care in Northumberland winter winds!
• Four generations of Landlords
• The reaction of the Corporate Colleagues
• The reaction of the Gene Pool
• The gruesome 200 year history of the Stone Caravan
• How the Stone Caravan got its name
• Bloodshed and Border Reivers

Requests?

Atropos and the Tornado

I was on the fifth floor of Corporate Tower in Central London yesterday when our London Tornado hit. First a crack of thunder and in every cubicle heads turned to the window. The sky turned a lurid dirty mauve, and rain started to sweep past horizontally.

Reactions were fascinating:
60% of the workforce were just sane. Fascinated, a little awed perhaps, glad to be indoors.
20% expressed understandable but pretty irrational levels of fear. One woman burst into tears.

The real nutters were the two women who climbed onto the desk for a closer view, regretting that they were indoors, and not somewhere a tad windier (like the North Atlantic!) where they could have real fun.
So that would me and partner-in-lunacy Lisa then.

I'm with Jack Aubrey on this one - I just wanted to be out at sea, enjoying a "good blow". (There's nothing like a nasty squall and near death to make you forget sea-sickness.)

Interestingly Lisa was the only person who heard about the frog eating snake living under the Stone Caravan without flinching.
"Cool!" she said.