33 More Lag Farm

Well, the snow buggered off and the ice then had its day.

The ford looks a but different. The lumps of ice flowing down the river were scarily huge. This blockage and the ice on the hill (the other way into the farm) sealed us off from the rest of the world.

This ice step was about a foot high with half in the water - no way through here then.

The thawing ice makes for some interesting scenery changes

Eerie but pretty

I had a phone call from my brother Bruce and when we told him we were in Scotland he invited us up to Aviemore where he was due to have a dog sled race.

We decided that was a great idea and decided to add a couple of days on to do some skiing. I found a campsite and made a booking.

So, to do this I had to re-commision the motorhome. By this I mean sort out the water system which was drained down whilst we were staying in the farm. I decided to move Lizzy from a previously frozen area which was now a bog and promptly got bogged in. I still had one set of snow chains on and promptly snapped one of them off breaking one of the chains. I was lucky not to snap the brake pipe off. Anyway, Sandy saved the day with a tow from his tractor.

We spent the next couple of days clearing crap of of Lizzy and trying to make some more space. We did succeed to a degree, but we also loaded up with our ski gear so I suppose we ballanced it all out and aro no better off realy !

Now that the days were a bit warmer and the farm hose had thawed out It was drain plugs back in and I then filled the water tank back up and saw that I had a leak. The internal filling hose had frozen (obviously not completely drained) and pushed the hose out of the connector. Simple job once identified.

Next job was to turn the pump on and pressurise the system. I fired it up and wondered why I could not get the pressure up. Then I found that there was water pissing out of the bottom of Lizzy. The water purifier (a 12" long carbon filled filter) had shattered with the frost. I had pumped about 50 litres of water into the inside of Lizzy, fortunately only in the underfloor void. We wait to see if there has been any permenant damage.
Again, fortunately, I had a spare filter and fitted it in minutes.
Next problem was the outside temperature guage, which was now reading minus 40 deg C...nice. I did not bother even trying to fix that.

Whilst we were doing all of the above, Leon decided to start acting realy strange and became extremely clingy with Karen. He would not stop squawking (constant meowing) at her. AZfter a couple of days It was driving her mad. On top of this his teats were getting enlarged so there was obviouly something wrong with him.
We booked an appointment with the vet the day before our departure for Aviemore. Once there the vet told us to stop him eating and bring him back the next day for blood tests...brilliant. We were due for a 9am getaway the next morning...not any more.

The next day, the 19th Jan, we duly popped down to the vets in Sandy and Margo's Terios as we could not park Lizzy anywhere near the vets. At the vets, we met a different vet, the one that gave Leon his rabies blood test many months ago. This female vet was like Sweeny Todds younger sister. She took 3 needles to get the sample. 
In Leons typical fashion, he did not make a murmour - bless him. 

We then drove back to the farm, fired up Lizzy and set off for Aviemore...3 hours late.