The Stonehead road trip
20 10 2007
We set off on our journey to Lanarkshire to collect our new sow at 0610, 40 minutes later than we’d have liked because of the need to get many of the day’s chores done before we left. The boys, as always, were very excited to be up before dawn ready for another “expedition”. The Other Half and I do sometimes ponder the merits of putting them on the other side of the mesh, though!
As is so often the case with our old Land Rover, the out trip is usually hard going to start with and this time was no exception. Power was down a bit making hills a hard slog, while there was some vibration around 50mph, which also happens to be the Defender’s best cruising speed (and the legal speed with a trailer on single carriageways). But with 100 miles under the tyres, things started to smooth out and we arrived at the Bidgiemire Pig Company’s headquarters near Elvanfoot at 11am. (And don’t worry, that’s just my sense of humour, Linda and Graham really aren’t that grand!!)
We had a good natter with Linda and Graham, then suddenly realised it was almost 1pm and we should be back on the road. So we loaded up our new Berkshire sow, had a quick look at Bidgiemire’s other pigs - Large Blacks, Tamworths, a Saddleback and more Berkshires - then headed back north. The Defender was now running extremely well with plenty of power and no vibration, which meant that in true Stonehead fashion something else would go wrong…
And yes, we were proved correct. First, we ran into roadworks in the Forth Road bridge that delayed us for 30 minutes and saw the Defender’s temperature rise into the black (the temperature gauge has a broad band of white, a narrow band of black, and then the red zone). The electric radiator fan was working hard so we turned on the heater and that brought the temperature down just into the white, while clearing the jam cooled it still further. Next, the driver’s seat cushion collapsed, which meant I got a sore back very quickly but improved repairs with blankets and sacking solved that. We finally drove through out gates at 8pm, then had to unload, do the chores and then have a late supper at 9.15pm. Phew!
Apologies to Townie, who’d offered us a stopping place on our way back. We simply ran out of time as we had to keep the trip to under eight hours to meet the livestock transport regulations.
The combination of roadworks, a slow cruising speed and breaks to two-hour intervals meant we were pushed for time.
In fact, that’s a serious result of the European transport regulations. Having an eight-hour limit works well if you have a modern lorry traveling on decent motorways.
But if you’re a smallholder, croft or smallfarming using slower vehicles with trailers over meandering single carriageways and poor quality dual carriageways, then the eight-hour limit becomes a serious hurdle to bringing in top quality, new livestock.
In our case, we can only just reach the three other breeders of Berkshires in Scotland within the limit. All are in the Borders and all are just inside the eight-hour limit if all goes well (five or six hours on a good day; seven plus if roadworks or crashes slow things down).
Saturday’s trip took us five hours, 40 minutes to get there (early start meant we could avoid traffic), while the return took seven hours (roadworks and more vehicles on the road).
We have no way of accessing quality Berkshires from England as we can’t manage the trip inside eight hours, while hauliers won’t carry small numbers of animals - even as backloads.
That makes it very, very difficult to establish and build a new rare breed herd in north-eastern Scotland - and it must be even worse in the Highlands and Islands.
those roadworks are a nightmare, I should have warned you as I fell foul of them last weekend
We should know better. There have been roadworks on the Forth road bridge from when we started driving up to Scotland to look for a croft and visit the OH’s parents - at least six years.
Good to hear family, sow and landie made the trip OK,
interested to see you point out putting heater to MAX on engine getting hot,
a great trick to know and common sense really, but not many know it and I wonder how many engines could have been saved a cooking and head or headgasket failure
It’s an old Australian trick when driving in the bush. It’s better to cook yourself, than the engine.
In our case, we were also helped by the fact that I’d replaced the original heater matrix with a high efficiency one. With the windows wound down, the ventilation fan running flat out, the heater at maximum and hot air billowing out the windscreen vents, it wasn’t surprising it dropped the temperature enough to see us through.
Still, I think I’ll have to add a new radiator matrix to the Land Rover’s “too do” list.
Our Landy used to do that trick, people would look at us oddly as it would be freezing cold and raining and yet we would have all the windows open and be hanging out the windows panting!
The regulations are the same reason that although we have a perfectly good horsebox 7,.5T, we cant bring our two horses up ourselves when moving to Scotland next month. We have to get a livestock transport co to do it
Where are you moving to?
It’s the “one off adventures” that help to make life interesting; organising and completing a challenge like the “collect Daisy day” puts interest and excitement in a families life. Especially so when the kids are involved. I am glad you had a good and fruitful day folks.
Note: 1: Are you getting any rain as yet?
2: As I type Tiger, my aging Corgi x Kelpie is snoring away beside my
chair, what a life he has …… chuckle.