major delays ahead

there have been  doing some road improvements in the Hatston Industrial Estate.
And they are retarmacing at a T-junction.
So they need to put some traffic controls in place.

So going to work , I see this sign ( for a couple of weeks) at the slip road to Hatston

And i go in a bit further.

remember, there are no permament traffic lights in Orkney.
( and also no dual carriageway- ie 2 lanes going in one direction)

So here is an irritating 'minor' delay

And here is a major delay. 

3 CARS WAITING AHEAD OF ME.

  I had to wait for one change of traffic lights !

Barbara and Conor

 Its been a bit windy over the last couple of days  - first Storm Barbara thesn, 24 hours later, Conor.

The headline wind speed reported by the BBC was 82 mph.  Orkney has a number of weather stations around the Islands. The information they collect is available on the Orkney Harbours website 

Some data from Black Craig ( just outside Stromness) . Openstreetmaps has Black Craig  in the correct place. Google maps has it located in Shapinsay , for some reason .

The first peak is Storm Barbara, with a lull in the early hours of christmas day, then the wind gets up again for Storm Conor.   So 90.5 knot gust = 104 mph.

Kirkwall itself wasnt as bad - its sheltered ( a bit ) from string Westerly winds

So we would have been somewhere between the 2. 

Someone in Birsay lost the roof of  their shed 

And for us .  venturing out : 

 a couple of the lamb shelters got overturned and moved 

And some of the beds in the vegetable garden got trashed.  So i clearly didn't fasten  everything together as well as I should have done in the spring.

And you can see what turmips , swedes(neeps) and carrots look like with the leaves blown away

Christmas is coming

in the past we have kept cockerels through the winter   - but its a bit of a waste. They consume feed and  don't put on much weight .
So we have a concerted effort before we get  too much into the winter .

 They all get plucked, but some just have the breasts and legs removed. But some become roast chicken.

So we are self-sufficient in  chicken, 

bantam vs pheasant

We had Hoppy  the pheasant around in June. He is still around , and there are several more that are regular visitors.
And they make nuisance of themselves   terrorising the geese, ducks and hens out the way to eat any corn that has been scattered.
But the smallest of the hens, Harriet the bantam, has clearly had enough of this.

Our own race

This lot  are heading towards tupping-time. And we need to give them  a mineral/viatmin supplement. And rthey arent keen. With fewer sheep weve just corralled them into a smaller spaceand then administer it one a  time , but with  23 it wont be as straightforward to keep track of who has had and who hasnt.


So we made a sheep race  from hurdles, gates and stuff

Encourage the sheep to come down  with a bit of food.

And put them a few at a time intro the race , so they can be dosed and then let out

Job done !

And then its tupping in 6 weeks or so .

BA -again

BA are certainly not my favourite airline   - NABAFWBAFNFWBACF
is one reason .   And ive managed to avoid givign BA more money for 2 years or so - FlyBe going to London City Airport and I've discovered that the Caledonian  Sleeper is a reasonable  way of travelling north

 But I need to travel again ,and Fly(May)Be don't go to London City in November, so BA it is after a 2 year hiatus .

So i try and choose a flight and I need to  be back on monday morning . Im not going to spedn hours  getting out to Heathrow and hanging around , so saturday , and London City it is.

And why does coming back on  a saturday cost twice as much as travelling south on a tuesday ?. Because they can charge that , and get away with it .

Selecting dates gives you the option of being flexible . Does it matter ? Well I think it does . Im still trying  to work out what buttons do what on flight choices and prices, but this is the situation at the moment ( I think)

heres a screenshot . If you  tick flexible dates , the price of saturday flights is a bit lower than if you say the dates are fixed.

 

Depending on which outward flight you choose, the price of the   return flight can vary. Its either £188, 194 or £195

£194 return flight

£195 return flight

It is not possible to see the  return flight and the outward flight  on the same screen - the list is so long , you have to scroll.  And when you select the outward journey, the prive for the return one changes .

And they do it with some javascript .

So they charge depending on how desperate to travel on a particular day .
'Dynamic pricing' means one price changes depending on what else you choose.
They design their website to obfuscate what they are doing .

And has BA gone up in my estimation ?

Farewell to the Kye

... to the cows. Its time for them to move on  and give the grass a chance to regrow whilst there is still some daylight and warmth.

So


1. Herd the cows down from the field

2. Pen them whilst we get ourselves sorted out

3.  Bring up trailer

4. Encourage cows to go in aforesaid trailer

5 Cows ready to leave

things ive learned over the last few weeks 

• Cows are big 
• Cows are very inquisitive and curious and will come to see what you are doing 
• When cows push on something ( posts/fences) it gives way eventually I
• I know now why bones can get broken if someone gets in the way of a cow.