Your Day (apart from gardening) - what took place?

A bit of a "blast from the past" for me today as, on flicking through the TV channels I came across a program on BBC Alba about the Isle of Lewis and a place called Aird Uig where I was stationed around 1968 on what was a Early Warning Radar Station. Anyway, the program was about the residents in the local area wanting to buy back the RAF Station which is on a point of land known as Gallans Head. I was detached there for about 9 months to help close it down and have good memories of the place and the Island. There is only one of the original villagers left and the rest of the Village Population are known as "incomers" no matter how long they've lived there Anyway the program followed the progress of the council of people trying to buy the land and it was quite interesting as they had no money as such and there's no industry or jobs there. So through the program I was seeing views of the old RAF camp, the village, the hills, cliffs and beaches that I'd seen in reality many moons ago. The camp had be sold eventually to one person who tried to sell various buildings to people who wanted to escape City life and live there. He didn't really succeed and the camp fell into disrepair and became abandoned. The MOD agreed to sell the land to the "incomers" but at a price of £110, OOO pound and also an estimate of £460,000 to clean up the site and make it safe. The incomers applied to a Scottish Government Trust for a grant and at the end of the program got a £200, 000 grant to buy the land and a help to start the cleaning up. The area around Gallans Head is really wild but beautiful and well worth saving even if there are no, except one, of the original Villagers there and 4 of the 8 houses in the Village are empty. So now the place is in the hands of the "incomers" who love the place and I must admit that even today I remember just how wild, raw, and beautiful it was and is. So an unexpected trip back to a place I been to many Moons ago and a stirring of many good memories.

 

Nice story ARMANDII

Mine is rather mundane.

I have to finish replacing the bulbs in the outside lights (on front of building) as some of them had not worked for a while (was waiting for them to come back into stock). By the time I got them yesterday it was 2.30 and dusk was fast approaching and it was a struggle to change them.

As it has been a long time since I've had to change them I couldn't remember what sort of fixings held the top of the fittings. So I brought along a variety of screwdrivers and spanners as well as the light bulbs (I'm probably the most non-DIY person you could ever meet ). I got the ladder from the shed (a long walk), climbed up to look at the fittings and found that they were small, fancy, nuts that were much too small for the spanners.

So back indoors for some pliers, back up the ladder and then try to undo the quarter inch wide nuts. This wasn't helped by Sarafi the cat deciding he wanted to help as well. There's a tree right alongside the first light (on the corner of the building) and he climbed the tree and kept patting me on the cheek . So I lifted him off the tree and sat him on the roof, where he happily sat and kept telling me what to do.

The light fittings, and the nuts, are black. The nuts are tiny and there are bushes underneath, so I had to be very careful. It was below zero and my fingers were freezing. I managed to change two of the lights - had to clean them as well - but the third one had to be left until today as it's the most awkward one to get to (shrubs in the way) and it was now too dark to see what I was doing. I've left all the gear in the gutter above the light and the ladder in place.

 

I think in those days of the aftermath of WWII and the ensuing Cold War, Kandy, National Security, in the form of Early Warning Radar Stations were priority in the "panic" of a perceived attack from Russia. £5 in the 1950's and 1960's is worth around around £108 in today's money and it was probably worth nothing, in those days, in real estate value, also I'm pretty sure that the Villagers saw nothing of the money which probably was paid to some Scottish Government Department..
The Villagers weren't even consulted in the matter but, I think, they benefited not from the original sum of money paid for the land but for the jobs which they got while the RAF Station Aird Uig was there.
I agree that the sum of money demanded to buy the land back was, in my opinion, too much and would have thought around £50,000 to £60,000 would have been fairer especially as there was that huge bill, in the future, for cleaning up and making safe the site. To be honest, I'm not sure what they mean by making "safe" as what underground cables there were were isolated [I know, because I was the one who did it]. The Generators had been removed and sold, all power was shut off permanently from the site two days before I left. There were no radiation problems or suchlike. All the buildings were left absolutely clean and in good repair as was the whole site so I was surprised to see them in such disrepair and the rubbish left in them, but that was due I realised later to the selling of the land to that one person and people moving in.
I was/am a lousy sailor and can be seasick for days after a trip on the water. In those days you had to catch a McBrains Ferry from Mallaig to Stornoway and I "died" on that trip. But I found out that the Royal Mail, while using McBrains Ferries for carrying the mail, also used a guy that flew in from Mallaig and landed on a beach at Stornoway so I used to pay him £5 to take me, when he could, to avoid the sea trip
I think it's ironic that, because there are none of the original Villagers, bar one, left that it's the "incomers" that are restoring Gallans Head and trying to resuscitate Aird Uig I remember one thing about the place was that when arriving by Land Rover across the island I could see the Station a few miles away and thought it was on fire as I could see thick "smoke" on it. That turned out to be low cloud, and I do mean low, because on some days you could reach up and touch the cloud. The other thing was that in the morning when going to the Mess for breakfast you sometimes had to kick the door of your accommodation hut open because the Sheep would lie against the door on the outside.

 

I suspect my day was very similar to a lot of people - reclaiming the house from the Christmas decorations, fighting to unravel fairly lights and putting them all away for another year.... I replaced the draught excluder strip on the loft hatch (a 'whilst I am up here' job), and generally tidied up. Just had a lovely soak in a warm tub, and now am thinking of dinner and beer.....