Photographs of the Luss Finish Line Party

Preparations before he arrives.

The marquee. Balloons and bunting.

The Luss village school.

And here he is. Over the Finish Line.

Passing on the message from Toward Primary School.

The ARSN tee shirt and the party decoration.

More presentations and support for Luss School and Parent Council from Minard Primary School with SNP MSP Mike MacKenzie, Councillor George Freeman.

Farmer had cycled over 250 miles in mostly rain and unseasonably strong winds! But despite the weather he had a great time, and enjoyed meeting everyone along the way.

Thank you to Luss and to everyone who showed him support and hospitality in the other schools and communities he visited.

Farmer on holiday

If you look at the ForArgyll website you will be able to see the full story of Somerset's trip from Treshnish to Luss via 9 threatened primary schools in Argyll and Bute. I cannot post the photos I took today because I can't get them off my phone - will do so when I get home.

The last visit was today in Luss. A surprise Finish Line Party was arranged by the dedicated Parent Council and preparations involved anxiously watching the forecast and taking suitable action (involving a trip to B&Q to purchase a small marquee). Somerset was due to arrive between 12.30 and 1.

We got there before midday and were told he had been sighted in the village already, but he sensitively lurked around away from the school, and duly appeared sporting a North Bute Primary School tee shirt (slogan reading North Bute School - Family of Friends). Finish Line Ribbon was held across the road leading up to the school and over he rode to great cheers. Daughter and I were behind the ribbon and he was very surprised to see us there, but we wouldn't have missed it for the world. It had started to rain when we arrived and as I write, still it has not stopped for 11 hours.

A wet wedding taking place in the village, I hope the bride had an umbrella. High heels and bare legged guests look inappropriate in torrential rain trying to navigate deep puddles looking for the church. Luss village is extremely charming - attractive stone cottages with gardens bursting with Himalayan poppies, and overwhelming abundant greenery. Seems well ahead, compared to Treshnish - our trees around the house are still not fully in leaf. The Luss folk were lovely - welcoming and hospitable. 2 families of children had travelled down from Minard School which was great. Mike McGregor List MSP was there, as well as Councillor George Freeman, Labour MSP Jackie Baillie, and Alan Reid LibDem MP. What would this village be without a school? Lots of photographs were taken, and Somerset was interviewed by URTV. (not quite sure what that is but still!)

Looking back, looking around, looking forward

Happy New Year! Farmer and family spent Hogmanay at a ceilidh cum party held at Ulva School - though we did get home before the bells as Daughter was totally exhausted and was not going to make midnight! Members of the community of all ages from 5 weeks to 70+ years turned out on a cold still night, and it was a lovely evening. The snow before the end of term cut short the usual Christmas greetings and parties so it was good to get together and celebrate.

A great demonstration of Fire Poi by Ellie.

Farmer has brought the cows in off the hill. One morning last week when he went to feed them on the hill above Toechtamhor, they were not hanging round the feed troughs but were waiting at the upper hill park gate as if to remind him they needed some more shelter. So now the weather can do what it likes, whilst they wait for their calves to arrive in the dry.

The hoggs had been indoors throughout the last spell of cold weather and snow but they are now turned out into the field beside Shian and Duill. And heads up rushing towards the gate as soon as they hear quad, buggy or Farmer's voice - so they would seem to be well trained to the bag (of food). In the morning looking out of our window these earnest brown faces look up at you imploring you to hurry up with the food.

On Wednesday 5th January the schools story turned a corner - not a full stop, more a pause. A Special Council Meeting called by 9 Councillors (SNP and Independents including Mull's Mary Jean Devon and Gordon Chalmers) brought nearly all of the Councillors into the meeting at Kilmory. The Provost declared that information made public by SRSN (Scottish Rural Schools Network) made a Material Change to the Council Vote on the Proposals in November 2010, and therefore the Consultation period should be halted, the Proposals withdrawn.

There followed some disappointing politicking and posturing but the end result was that new Proposals will be prepared following a review of the entire school estate, not just the 25 schools on the initial closures list. So we are in a time of suspension. We don't know if we will be on the next list or not. We won't know until March 3rd at the earliest, and the uncertainty is exhausting, but at least the 'dodgy dossier' has been ripped up, and for now we can catch up with other chores - like looking for eco paintfor the bathrooms at West, Middle and East, and changing East living room around a bit! Looking, too, for a shower over bath for Duill, though whether that will happen this winter depends on whether the plumber has time to install it or not before the bookings start again.

Ulva School and the turning to Ulva Ferry (where the ferry crosses to Ulva and where the Turus Mara trips leave from).

Still lots of starlings on the bird feeders in the garden. And we have acquired 2 handsome cock pheasants who join the hens at the base of the tall bird feeder waiting for dropped seed from above. We didn't see any bramblings here but have been enjoying lots of golden eagle activity - see Prasad's blog for photographs.

It has been a beautiful cold and dry week. Ice on the puddles. Sun in the sky. Sharp outlines of silhouetted Mull hills against clear sunset skies, as the sun drops and darkness falls. The time of year when the island is even more of a haven - free from the mainland Christmas frenzy (as we discovered in a mobbed Fort William yesterday). Owl box 2 is in position in the Black Park, easy for everyone going past to Haunn to watch through binoculars without having to go too close.

waiting for 5pm ferry to tie up at Craignure

Out and about this week... The dreaded Council meeting took place on Thursday at Lochgilphead where Argyll and Bute Councillors voted 19 - 17 for the flawed school closures Proposals to go out to Consultation. The flaws in the papers and the way the Council has handled them give no one any confidence how the council officers will handle the consultation process.

The end of the Consultation period is 24th February so it feels at the moment like we have a long haul ahead. So if anyone reading this can pull a road safety expert out of their hat (or a writer or a pet journalist on a national newspaper or the author of a thesis on the benefits of small schools or an authority on the social and economic impacts of closing schools in remote isolated areas) please get in touch.

I have to admit having been to the inaugural meeting of the Argyll Rural Schools Network (ARSN) the night before in Lochgilphead, I felt (naively) confident that morality would win the day and that the Proposals would be thrown out, so when the result came and it was so close, I was fairly gutted.

ARSN is open to any 'closing' and any 'receiving' school. There is power in a united voice, and in pooling knowledge and information. There is a website. Locally in Argyll there is a community orientated website called For Argyll which has been running stories since the Proposals were made public. They blogged from the Council meeting, a sort of twitter I guess, so that the many folk who were not allowed into the Council Chamber could pick up the gist of what was going on. Only one representative from each meeting was allowed in, despite calls to move the meeting to a venue suitable of accommodating all those who wanted to attend what was after all a public meeting.

Behind the scenes support from the Scottish Rural Schools Network (SRSN) has been excellent. In the run up to Thursday's meeting they quickly hosted a website to hold useful information relevant to Argyll and Bute school closures, and worked away in the background to look into the facts and figures. SRSN has been invited by the Scottish Government (Mike Russell) to contribute to a working group to strengthen the statutory guidance for rural schools under threat of closure which is a good measure of the respect they deserve.

On the farm, the hoggs are all the cattle shed learning that there is more to food than grass - every year at this time, Farmer brings the hoggs in and lays out a snaking line of sheep troughs. To begin with the troughs are trodden on, upturned, and the sheep nuts scattered on the earth floor of the shed as they don't know what the food is. If there are animals in the shed who know how delicious the nuts are - like the pet lambs (Brownie etc) - they have the troughs to themselves to begin with, until the others begin to copy them and once that happens they have 'got it'! Soon they are all waiting for the sound of the shed door opening, and running in a big wave towards the man with the bag. Once they all understand, Farmer can let them out again into the fields and know that they will all come to the trough. When we first moved here in 1994, the sheep weren't fed supplementarily. What this meant was that the older ewes didn't know to come to the trough so you couldn't supplementarily feed any of them carrying twins or who were ill. It took 4 or 5 years to get the whole flock feeding, by teaching the new ewe lambs each winter to feed. Having done this now for years, it means if Farmer brings a ewe in to the shed at lambing time, he knows she will know to eat the food on offer in the shed.

Farmer tying old duvet on to lid of water tank to reduce chance of freezing.

I can see snow on Macleod's Tables (Skye) this morning gleaming in the far distance beyond Canna and on Canna and Rum too, those distinctive mountains rising above Calaich Point, dusted with a freezing covering of snow. There isn't any here, just ice on the puddles.

We had a night away visiting friends in Lochaber, and had a whirlwind trip to Fort William. Good ferry related signs caught my eye yesterday. Corran jetty is being upgraded so the wee ferry is on, and they are using a floating jetty, so no lorries - as a consequence the Harbro lorry which delivered feed to us before we left on Friday afternoon has to detour from Lochaline to Salen, Acharacle, up to Lochailort and back to Fort William that way, as there is a low bridge on the Loch Eil alternative route round to Fort William from Ardgour - Corran ferry! An extra 2 hours drive for him. Once he had been unloaded at Treshnish, we leapt in the car and drove like a snail through the ungritted Glen road at sub zero temperatures to get to Fishnish for the extra late sailing. People complain about Calmac but it is a pretty good service to be able to ring up and book an extra ferry. The only passengers were us and the Harbro lorry.

And yesterday on our way back, at Lochaline. 4 o'clock.

Petitions

Not much news from the farmhouse tonight.

All week has been taken up with school closures. We do have a petition online and it would be great if you felt like signing it. http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ulva4111/petition.html

I will write again soon. In the meantime here is a letter I sent to the Oban Times this week.

On Thursday 28th October, pupils at Ulva School were awarded a Green Flag for their achievements as an Eco School. The next evening they held a Halloween Party - the small school packed with family, neighbours and folk from the Ulva area.

In September, 3 of the older pupils sang in Gaelic at the Mod in Tobermory - winning 2 Seconds and a First in the Solos, as well as performing as a group and getting a Second.
At the Harvest Service on Ulva, the same 3 children sang (and played recorder and violin) to a packed church.
In the spring they performed in a play at the Mull Drama Festival and won 2 prizes.
As they do every year they sang to a packed church in the Easter Service on Ulva.
During the summer term, as in previous years, the children grew their own vegetables in the playground. Before half term they harvested those vegetables, baked bread and made bramble and apple jelly from brambles they had picked near the school.
The children are integrated with their local community and have a strong sense of place and belonging - as illustrated by their contribution to a National Library of Scotland project producing a state of the art Mediascape presentation for visitors to the island of Ulva.

These are some of their day to day achievements and as well as all this, the children succeed at their school work, easily keeping up with learning targets. These children are confident individuals, with a strong sense of responsibility for their fellow pupils and their environment and they contribute an enormous amount to their community - in short, they EMBODY the Curriculum of Excellence.

On Tuesday 26th October, the parents of the children received a letter from the Council telling them of their proposal to close this wonderful school.

School closures, Awards and Case Studies

This has been quite a week.

Our anticipation of the long awaited Thistle Awards Gala Dinner in Edinburgh on the 29th were totally eclipsed by a letter we received on Tuesday 26th from Argyll and Bute Council informing us, as parents of a child at Ulva Primary School, that they propose to close the school at the end of the summer term.

Suddenly any nerves and apprehensions we may have had about going to this fancy 'do' were put sharply into perspective by the thought of the west coast of north Mull losing its only school and community building. For not only is it a really wonderful small school, but it is the focal point for the scattered inhabitants of that coastal area of the island. We (parents and local community) are going to fight it, and have been contacting our Councillors, MSPs, MPs and anyone we can think of, for support.

On a lighter note - Farmer had his photograph taken to accompany a LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) Case Study. The vet came to blood test our cattle for BVD and to train Farmer in the art of Condition Scoring his cows.

And no, the Awards were not cancelled just because we were having traumas with our school. Life had to go on, we had to go to Edinburgh to attend the Gala evening. And what a dazzling glittery affair it turned out to be - with pipers piping as everyone arrived at the EICC, trays of delicious bubbly or cocktails, the Awards ceremony itself in the huge auditorium with comedian/impersonator Ronni Ancona as MC (standing alot of the time in a cloud of dry ice), armies of waitresses and waiters serving 500+ guests (they emerged hurriedly out of the kitchens like ants scurrying in line, carrying the food, to each table, one table at a time) twinkling lights, and thistles (actually Visit Scotland use eryngiums instead of the native thistle...) - there was even a red carpet.

We did not bring an Award home with us, but we were treated wonderfully for being Finalists - lots of people said lovely things, and all in all, it was a great evening and we felt very proud of Treshnish - our 15 seconds of fame!

The red carpet to greet us. (Now that was a first for both of us).

Our table, hosted by Sustainable Tourism category sponsors, Scottish Natural Heritage. 2 of the SNH staff on our table had stayed at Haunn before, so that felt good. You can see the eryngiums.

Some one else's table. You can see the twinkly lights.

And after dinner (it was 11pm before coffee was served) a ceilidh band played and called the reels so enthusiastically it was impossible to talk any more, which was probably a good thing!

Anyway it was a great evening all in all, and on the way home the next day, we composed a letter in our heads to the Oban Times about the school.