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We spent the first day of our fortnight in Perthshire (Sunday 13th May) at the cottage: the weather was poor and the surrounding roads were closed due to a big cycling event at Pitlochry. I found an unusual still life object to draw in a cupboard above the stairs - a gong supported by two feet from a deer, complete with hooves and fur.
The place we stayed in for our fortnight in Perthshire (12th - 25th May 2012) wasn’t that warm during the first week, with a bizarre heating system, coming on at bizarre times, beyond our own control. It was actually the east wing of a country house, with sprawling grounds. One of the more interesting self-catering bases we’ve stayed in, even if not the most comfortable. The owner, a lady with a posh plum southern accent, was around sometimes; the caretaker lived nextdoor in the West Wing. Both came round the first night, apologetic just as we’d found no hot water. The heating hadn’t been turned on in advance of our arrival. Better when it came on; but it was set to come on during the day, when we were invariably out / more active; then, off in the evening, when we felt cold. We then had to make do with electric heaters and a gas fire reminiscent of the one in the first house I grew up in during the 1970s. It was an old house with high ceilings, so would have been expensive to heat (heating / electricity thankfully included in the price) and we only felt warm, sitting close to the radiators / heaters; something I might expect over the winter / in March, but not in May. Then, at the beginning of the second week, the weather changed completely: the daytime temperature increasing by about 20C. Rooms which had been too cold the previous week, now felt comfortably cool. Further up the hill there was a farm.
A menagerie of animals all round. Sheep grazed in the fields either side of the long, zig-zag sloping driveway down to the river. There were several dogs in the courtyard, including a black Labrador barking for about twenty minutes at a time, whenever we came to the bathroom window facing the courtyard. There was also a cockerel; chickens which looked like cockerels, with the same dark green and rusty red feathers; and couple of guinea fowl. I saw my very first red squirrel in the garden, and several more when we were out and about. These are endangered species, wiped out off much of the UK by the spread of the grey squirrel. In England, they are only found in the Lake District and on the IOW.
