construction work and barn renovations in the scottish highlands
my name is shaun and welcome to my youtube channel and to a new two-part vlog series from scotland
where i shared an update to my family's home renovations and the progress they've been making
good morning
wow what another beautiful day is and there is no bread in front of my car so something at it
i don't know if it'll be a pine bar and that's what i wanted to see we're gonna have a look
let's go and check out huh
the dogs the dogs at the bread of course they did
oh well
so
just totally did that for the camera there's actually two of us here one of them is holding
the camera deck and i have left left old man so we're going for a walk we're gonna try and make it
all the way down to loch sooner the sea lock maybe might make it down there quite a far walk about
20 or 30 minutes each way i'm not the only shaun spelt exactly the way i spell it in the village of
strontian because i found another one up there and yes i have had that joke multiple times
so i made it down here to the main village square of strontian
there's not really much to it it's like a kind of public grass area
with some picnic benches which we're currently sat on um and then over there in the corner i think
they are somewhere there's like an arts and crafts shop there somewhere
maybe there are some craft shop then you have an actual convenience store there which is open
quite a lot and has basically everything you would need maybe that's in craft shops up here
and here there's a cafe where you can get rolls and breakfast and stuff walked all
the way down now to the to the sea to the sea lock here in front of me that is loch sunart
which is technically the ocean it's salt water it doesn't look like it
i guess you could compare it to like a fjord in norway and the thai comes in and out here
it's very beautiful block sooner one of the most remote sea locks in scotland it's kind of like
the far extremes of strontium the village and here behind me there's an old hotel and pub
i think's the kind of main pub for the village now but i used to actually work here one summer
about 18 years ago when i was just a wee nipper i worked in their cleaning tables in the restaurant
that was a good summer i remember i used to be up there waiting tables and then
that beautiful view of the front
so
you know what's kind of funny the temperature we've got today i don't know what it is it must be
i don't know 18 but it feels warm it could be a shorts and t-shirt easily comfortably because
there's not a breath of wind not even a not even the tiniest breath of wind it's so calm and
comfortable the temperature is comfortable it's not at all even slightly cold and it's not too hot
and to be honest if it was this temperature if we had this temperature this feeling this sensation
all summer scotland would be a marvel
but there's lots of times in summer when it might be the temperature technically
might be warmer than it is now today but with wind coming off the sea and rain and it feels
miserable and that is more like the mainstay of the weather we get this weather right now is ideal
and like i said we're in march this is march this is a pretty early to get good weather like this
and it's been a solid week so far and actually before two or three weekends on the bounce when
it's been like this so i've been very lucky george has been working on this big massive tree stump
which is a lot of roots down below since we got here yesterday and he's now at the
stage where he's gonna be able to try and yank it out so he's got i think he's got a like a
wedge type of thing attached to that tree there it's just going to winch the thing out somehow
because that's directly in the path of where the deer fence is going to go which will stop
the deers coming from over there and hopping over i'm not convinced it's going to work
well i'm not convinced it's going to work
that's tightening it's tightening
it's going to snap that stick you've got there's definitely people in the comments asking me why
i'm not jumping in that hole and helping people as well but i'm allergic to manual labour
come on george we're back into it
i think we might be going about this the wrong way and i think if we were in the states
the answer to this problem no we'd be dynamite but dynamite down below the tree
and the hole where george has put that stick right you light it and then you run and then boom
and the trees come flying out i don't think we've got any dynamite here though
i'm not sure george is going to get this out by the time i have to leave
but i can't illustrate the problem though because if we could go down the bottom of the garden but
there's another tree stump when these come out as well there's a giant tree stump up there
that tree that has been cut a long time ago by people who used to live here
and i need to come out i'm not sure how it looks on camera but i was staggered absolutely staggered
by the sheer size of the roots like they go in every direction all the way down and this one here
is a really shocking one right it's been uncovered by my dad and george it goes all the way there and
that is thick like it doesn't look on camera with that there probably 12 inches thick and
it goes all the way up the garden underneath the bamboo there look all the way up from that
tree and i think this tree like this just shows you how clever plant life can be because that
root has been sent all the way up here to a moist part of the garden where the water tends
to collect underneath these bamboos it's always been sent on a journey to gather the water up here
take it back to the tree but that's that's another problem because we need to dealt with i feel like
i've got ticks on me i don't want to tick on me a lot of ticks here cats and the dogs get them
just resorted to hitting it you're resorting to just hitting it
there must be another route under there
well i just need to yank out the hole
so when you're getting started on the barn
yours down the line you got it before i went home just i haven't got out the hall yet at all
as we come to the end of this trip we're almost thinking about the time to go home uh i know a
lot of you guys may want to see an update to the house inside so i'm going to try and show you
but if i take you down to the bedroom where we stayed before it's actually backwards because
at the time it was just habitable and no it's not because we basically dug it all out look
but the reason is because all the floorboards were rotten and needed to be taken away
a lot of stuff needs to be done in here i can see just how deep the foundations go down here
all this needs sorted obviously that's going to take a lot of work
right back to the original brickwork there but one of the changes has been the upstairs part which
was uninhabitable last time we were here there was now one of the two bedrooms is
fit to stand so george has been staying up here um
it's all been cleaned out a little bit but along the other end of this corridor here at the top
there's now a bedroom my door stays still needs some work but it's fine for now it works
and i say that here down towards the old conservatory is
as it was it's still a lovely place to sit listen to the birds and look at the view
see the stars and all the rest of it to be friends here look
hey i'll show you one of the areas i kind of live in romeria it's been done over here
stone needs a lot of work but it's now usable as a living room space it's all kind of dusty and
stuff because all the works that are going on you can still see like exposed exposed
areas up there but this room is now where we
stayed we stayed in this bedroom last night which is pretty much finished to be honest
door open right to the garden which is great new floor on your bed all painted done
all this needs done at some point and it will be along with all the garden stuff and then
when you get that done you know whenever that is a year two years from now maybe they can think
about the barn and that is the kind of place that they will uh rent out eventually to holidaymakers
if they ever get that far because they might just get tired of it and think it's too much
and it's a lot it's a lot to do eating grass okay and grass are you getting grass mr flocky
ragna ragnar ragnar come here
good boy
so from leaving my folks house is strontine we drove back to the mainland mainland and back into
towards home to edinburgh i stopped at glencoe um ballyhoolish because i've heard about this
lock up here called glencoe locking which is a freshwater lock quite high up and we've come here
and look at that it's absolutely like a mirror the colors are just absolutely spectacular as well
wow nice being today it's a nice way beautiful it's like the meter it's like a meter the law
so
final stop of the weekend is right here on rana khmer i think the name of this lock is loch
bah not 100 sure but i think that's what it's called and as you can see it's just it's just
undescribable look at it you cannot paint that in a better way unbelievable come here park the
car up in the road jumped out the car now apart from the road traffic which goes past occasionally
i can hear the sound of geese in the background but apart from that i can hear anything
perfectly still and beautiful but i hope you guys have enjoyed this video today
it's been a while since i've been up here to the highlands to strontine specifically
before i come up and give you guys a better update but i will be back again soon at some point
hopefully and i'll be taking you guys along for the ride for more adventures so thank you very
much for coming and joining in i appreciate you and until the next adventure hope you have good
night morning evening afternoon or whatever time of day is wherever you are in the world take care
you