October started with a long anticipated trip and proceeded in stop start fashion when it came to completing the energy efficiency work. I am finally starting to catch my breath and feel a little more in control of what is going on around me. At the time of writing we are still sleeping in the shepherd’s hut in the garden, but we now have use of the kitchen and living room, albeit in slightly utilitarian fashion. As we completed the last of our planned travel, we welcomed a new furry family member.
Way back in 2019, some friends asked us if we would be interested in going to Transylvania with them. It wasn’t on our to do list, but having looked it up, it seemed right up our street, so happily agreed. We booked flights and accommodation – for May 2020. As we all know, no-one went anywhere in May 2020, but we never quite got around to re-scheduling – until now.
Our first few hours in Romania, you couldn’t have made up. It will become a good story in the future, but wasn’t much fun at the time. We flew into Bucharest and met up with another couple who had flown in a couple of hours before us. They had booked the hire car, but it was off site and when we eventually got in touch and found the pick up point, we got to the office only to discover that they had booked the car for the time their flight landed, not ours and we had been marked down as a no-show, having not arrived in the allotted 2 hrs. Much tutting and keyboard bashing later, and we finally had a car sorted. The car hire place was annoyingly situated on a very busy dual carriageway, so there was no chance to get a feel for the car before having to pull out at speed into fast flowing traffic. No sooner had we finally managed to squeeze out, than a warning light pinged on the dashboard to indicate low tyre pressure. Great. We managed to navigate back to the car hire office without incident and they re-inflated all the tyres.
Take 2 at pulling out into the traffic went a little more smoothly, but only about 100 metres down the road, a van pulling out of a car dealer didn’t look, and drove in the side of us. We were getting a bit fed up at this point, already being about an hour late and tired from a very early start. Luckily, the damage was fairly minor and the driver of the van worked for the car dealer, and his boss spoke reasonable English. We managed to google translate enough of the standard form for such situations to make sure we weren’t signing up to anything we shouldn’t and another hour later we were back on the road for the 3 hr drive to Brasov. On route, 3 of us received emergency alerts on our phones of the type that make you jump out of your skin. It was probably a good thing that we didn’t understand the content and didn’t translate it until we got to our apartment, as it was a severe weather warning for gales and 30cm of snow in the mountains…….
Thankfully, Brasov, where we were staying, is in the foothills of the mountains and there was only rain at lower altitudes. We did see a car with considerable snow on the roof the next day. On arrival in the dark and rain, no-one could face heading out to find a restaurant, so we opted to search for pizza in the supermarket nearby. We just about managed to see the funny side when said supermarket turned out to be replacing its fridges and freezers that evening, so half the shop was cordoned off, and there were no pizzas to be had either fresh or frozen. We managed to find pasta and sauce and a few things for breakfast, and were pleased to find the beer and wine aisle was very much open. Phew. Incidentally, Romanian wine is excellent and very reasonably priced.
The trip improved from there, and we spent a lovely few days exploring the medieval town and doing the tourist thing at Bran Castle (the one that supposedly inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula). The scenery in the area is stunning, and we would like to return to see more than 3 days would allow. We were very fortunate to see brown bears on an evening guided trip in the mountains.
We accepted when we moved to rural SW Scotland that international travel would become more difficult, and this is especially true in the winter. This time we opted to fly direct from Luton and pay my in-laws a flying visit rather than negotiate a time-consuming and convoluted route involving multiple planes. It does normally mean that you get back from a trip needing a holiday, but fortunately we don’t have to worry about taking extra days off work.
We have spent the last couple of years enjoying the freedom to take advantage of travel opportunities and when friends ask us to do things, we wanted our default answer to be yes. After a rather hectic year of travel and commitments in 2025, we are looking forward to spending more time at home, and made made a pact to stay at home (except perhaps for the odd campervan weekend away and potential family emergencies) from April to October and make the most of the house and garden. We’ll see how that goes…..
Having more use of the house, made October feel a bit more in control, and I am more of less back to my regular posting schedule. We haven’t quite got used to the luxury of having rooms at a steady temperature all day. The heat pump has now been operational for about a month, and we have 2 zones in the system. One controls the living room and small downstairs wet room in the modern part of the house and the other covers the kitchen and bedrooms in the old cottage. We still have an unheated single glazed conservatory between the two. We spent last winter with no central heating in the living room, having to light the wood burner if we wanted to spend time in there, which we usually didn’t do until the late afternoon, when it got dark.
Likewise, the hallway in the old cottage between the kitchen and bedrooms never had a radiator, so the little heat there was, disappeared up the stairs immediately. We always keep doors shut to keep the heat where we need it. We became accustomed to the sudden temperature drop when opening the kitchen door, so its a bit of a novelty now it is no longer there. The heat loss in the ‘rubble room’ downstairs is still higher than it should be, with open chimneys, bare stone walls and a concrete floor. It is colder in there than the rest of the house, as we keep the thermostat for that zone in the kitchen, not wanting to heat the garden. It is however much warmer than this time last year, with the large external vent closed up and the gentle heat from the 2 new radiators continuing the drying process nicely.
It remains to be seen how the costs will stack up against oil over the year, but we are definitely warmer with a constant gentle heat rather than a few hours a day morning an evening. We have it set to run at 18 deg C during the day and 16 at night to run the heat pump in the most efficient way. So far the cost doesn’t seem excessive, but it hasn’t been tested with really cold temperatures yet. We are fortunate where we are, on the edge of the warm jet stream, that winters are not as cold as most people assume when you say you live in Scotland, but the weather has been very mild even then. We are grateful for this, as sleeping the in shepherd’s hut hasn’t got too cold – yet. We are hopeful that we will end up spending a similar amount as when we were running on oil, but be much warmer. Last year we spent an average of £247 per month including electricity, oil and a small amount of firewood. This will include charging the car and we were away a lot last winter, so not a perfect comparison, but it will be interesting to see how it changes over the coming year.
While we are enjoying the warmth, we are not enjoying the haphazard approach to finishing off the job. We were waiting for 2 weeks for the plasterers to start the skimming over the insulation added upstairs and in the living room. When someone eventually turned up, there was just one of them with the promise of someone else a couple of days later, who never turned up. He did his best, but was called off to another job a few days later. He returned for 2 days the following week with a bad back and without the required equipment to reach the ceiling above the stairs and landing. On 31st October, almost 2 months after they started a 3 week job, the plumbers returned to fit the remaining radiators on fresh plastered walls upstairs and to fix a pipework issue we highlighted. While we wait for that last ceiling to be skimmed (it was promised for last week, but no-one tuned up), we are slowly getting on with the big clean up, prepping the walls for paint and booking a carpet fitter to refit the carpet in the bedrooms now they are slightly smaller all round. We are hopeful we’ll be able to move back into our bedroom in just over a week 🤞.
This prep work has become slightly slower because of a new addition to the family. 4 years after losing our last dog, we are now settled enough to rehome another. We collected the new Finding Enough hound just over a week ago from the Dogs Trust in Cumbria. She is a staffy cross and about a year old. Considering she was a stray and has had 3 different foster homes before coming to us, she is settling in remarkably well. She is essentially an overgrown puppy, who has never been taught anything, but she is very clever and is picking things up quickly. We may have a task on our hands persuading her that the sheep and cows in surrounding fields are not playmates, but we’ll master housetraining and recall first.
We never really considered buying a puppy, believing that there are far too many unwanted dogs in need of a home already, but I was gobsmacked at the going rate these days when I had a quick look. The rehoming fee for a rescue doesn’t seem to have increased much since we last did it 15+ years ago (£275), but puppies now go for £700-£2500 depending on breed 🫨. We await experiencing the much publicised skyrocketing of vet bills in recent years, but we are fortunate to have an independent practice near us that has glowing reviews. October saw the resurrection of the pet category on the expenses spreadsheet. For this month at least, it seems the uplift in expenses has been balanced out by a boost to the freedom fund.
Freedom fund value – £1,479,936 (up 52k on last month), yet another record high and our net worth has now breached the £2M mark 🙂
Expenditure – £2,511.03 (or a 2.50% withdrawal rate) including renovation costs, or £2,412.24 (or a 2.42% withdrawal rate) without renovation costs
Earned income – £0
A healthy increase in overall freedom fund value, with a fairly average month for costs. Most of the spending this month was in the travel category – making up £928 of the total. Most of this was spending in Romania, but there was also an overnight trip to Helensburgh, visiting Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House to celebrate a birthday. There was the Dogs Trust rehoming fee and a new bed etc that took the pet column to £373, the car needed an MOT (£54.85) and we spent £153 charging the car at public chargers to get to Luton and back. We spent just under £100 on the house renovation in October, on paint and more lime mortar (collected from Cumbria when we were almost passing). This will probably ramp up again in November, when we’re really hoping the install will be signed off, and then we’ll have to pay the balance for the batteries, and no doubt lights and shelves and other miscellaneous bits and bobs.
Chasing the money I am owed for contracting work has fallen off my radar in the last few weeks, so I really must get back on the case this month.
Reduce plastic waste by making one change every month – Nothing to report in October
Do something creative every month – I joined a jewellery making workshop in October led by someone in my artists and makers group. We made earrings from sea glass and recycled silver wire. Another lovely morning of creative escapism.
Record the birds and mammals spotted around the house each month – The record book is still tucked away somewhere amongst the rest of our packed up belongings, but we saw clouds of fieldfare and redwings this month, taking advantage of the bumper year of hawthorn berries. There were also starlings turning up mob handed and noisily taking over the sycamore trees behind the shepherds hut. Still no sightings of the pine martens, but the peanuts are disappearing overnight and the dog seems very interested in sniffing around the wood store, so we are pretty sure they are still in residence. There is not yet any sign that they have checked out the den box that the Vincent Wildlife Trust recently put up as part of their pine marten monitoring project. The guys who came to install it, did say that they suspected our wood store might be a more attractive, better insulated residence for the more discerning pine marten.
Some October scenery, plastering progress, the Hill House in Helensburgh (that has a much bigger damp problem than we ever had) and the new member of the family settling in. Oh, and keep an eye out for a red deer stag bellowing in one fo the photos with a rainbow.
Finding Enough 