What is October weather on Mull like? We are quite often asked this, and it is difficult to give an answer, but someone remarked to me the other day, as we stood outside in the sun, that this was ‘rally weather’ – and the Mull Rally starts tomorrow evening! I should perhaps put a warning on these photographs though, as it is not always like this in October, but October weather on Mull has been pretty good recently – particularly if we forget about the big storm we endured on Saturday night and Sunday.
It is hard to believe looking at this tranquil autumn view over Loch Cuin, that the river Bellart had burst its banks and was nearly up to the top of the arches of the bridge a couple of days ago. Today it was so peaceful and still.
The lamb and calf sales are over for us. Now it is time to start thinking about getting new tups (rams) and making sure our old ones are all in good fettle. We took 7 calves to Oban Cattle Sale on Tuesday and Farmer was moaning at the price of tup food. It is especially sweet and delicious (apparently, and full of protein) to build up condition before tupping starts in about 5 weeks time. We had the most beautiful drive to the ferry as the mist was rising.
We had the ‘man from the Dept.’ here today, finishing off our whole farm inspection. He has been measuring each fence line and field, every bit of coastline and across the hills too – with GPS. He came to show us the results today, on a very impressive (bafflingly complicated) bit of computer software. All seems to be okay, we seem to have lost some hill ground and found some in-by – compared to the old fashioned paper maps. (The ‘man from the Dept.’ is from the Scottish Govt. – Rural Affairs Dept in Oban). He certainly enjoyed October weather on Mull, striding out in the sun to finish measuring the late cut silage we made in September.
The tups are in front of the house at the moment. Brownie is a ‘wedder’ – he was a pet lamb reared by Daughter, and is always noisy when he sees humans and quite often comes over to say hello. He is also very fat!
Earlier in the week Prasad found a large Ray down beyond the boathouse. He thinks it is a Bottle nosed Ray, but hasn’t had it firmly identified yet. Yesterday Farmer and I went down to have a look, taking advantage of the fine October sunshine! It was much larger than I imagined it would be. These Ray are quite rare in these parts, and Farmer had seen it washed up (without realising what it was) before the big storm we had last weekend, so it clearly wasn’t killed by the storm.
The sunsets continue to enchant, they no longer set over the Isle of Coll, but are creeping down Tiree now. I took these photographs from the field beyond the Haunn Cottages. It was very still, and the skyine was dotted with roaring stags – the deer rut is in full song!
