All my bags are packed.......

Well here we are.

Here we are in Cardiff getting ready to move to The Outer Hebrides. I keep thinking that people like me don't do things like this but then I remember I am just me and I am doing this.

We're surrounded by boxes and interesting finds from charity shops that we're taking with us to help turn our little croft house into our home, even if it's just temporary.

We're not sure how this is going to work. Not yet. Apparently you have to experience two winters in The Outer Hebrides before you decide if it's the place for you. We've been there in March and May, June and July, September and October - managing to avoid the winter months, the season of long nights and short days. We have experienced the famous winds that whip your clothes against your skin and stop you from hearing your own voice. We've walked beaches in horizontal rain and driven roads so shrouded in mist that the corners crept up spattered the hub-caps with peaty puddles but we've always had sunshine at tea-time. Well, OK, that's a slight exaggeration - we've had daylight at tea-time. I try to tell myself that even this far south I leave for work in darkness and don't get home til after nightfall in November, December and January so of course I'll cope with Hebridean winters. At least two of them.

Our temporary home is a 1960s built pre-fabricated one and a half storey building. It's pretty unimaginative in its design but the setting is, in my opinion,  incredible. The kitchen overlooks a long skinny croft sweeping down to the Atlantic and the front of the house looks southwards over the village of Borve. Borve has a garage, a licensed grocery store and an inn with a bar where the locals sit, so I'm reliably informed by TripAdvisor. Apparently it annoys visitors or at least the ones that write reviews on TripAdvisor. 

The garden has the remains of blackhouse standing proud. There is evidence of these blackhouse remains all over the island. Some of them have been restored and resurrected for tourists to wander around and some are now holiday cottages. The one in our garden has four solid walls and a couple of windows and a door and the remains of a concrete chimney. The thatched and partially turfed roof is almost intact though I'm dying to see how completely weatherproof and safe it is.

Blackhouses were the main type of accommodation for the Islanders up until about 100 years ago, though some of them were inhabited right up to the 1970s. Originally they had no chimneys, the smoke from the central fireplace seeped up through the thatched roof. It was only when the state started to interfere with family life in the early 20th century that it was decided that primitive living needed to be modernised. Separate toilets and chimneys were the way forward. Unfortunately it created  outbreaks of TB and other disease because the peat smoke filled rooms and ammonia from the urine were natural antidotes to TB and midges. The chimneys were also made with more modern materials that helped to destroy the integrity of the structures.

When we were looking for somewhere to live I relied on GoogleMaps to help me picture where the properties were set. I must admit that the picture of the house placed by the Estate Agent wasn't very flattering at all but taking my little blue man for a StreetView walk helped me to discover the blackhouse in the garden. What a selling point! But it was never mentioned in the blurb accompanying the picture. It's probably a pain in the neck to maintain but I'm not the landlord. I can just brag about having a blackhouse for a garden shed without having to worry about whether or not it's going to fall down!

In two weeks time we'll be living there. Tuesday 4th June will be the first day of our Hebridean Adventure. Excited ? You bet I am !