Laurieston Hall (Tues 3 May - Wed 11 May)

Hello all,

We have finished the first week of our travels, which was spent at Laurieston Hall in south west Scotland. It’s a relaxed and friendly community of about 30 adults and children living in an old Edwardian mansion and its surrounding cottages/stables etc. It has about 135 acres of land, most of it beautifully mossy, old woods. You can see pictures of Laurieston Hall and read more about it by clicking here.

From Laurieston Hall

We were there on one of their maintenance weeks (these weeks happen 3 times a year). During a maintenance week all the people who live there are joined by visitors like us to have a big old go at some big old jobs that need doing – things like fixing roofs, building walls, major garden work and inside stuff like laying new carpets, sweeping chimneys and painting. Everyone works as a big team and lots of wonderful food is cooked to keep everyone well fed and happy all week long!

From Laurieston Hall

Cooking these meals was part of everyone’s work – we dished up a cracking green thai curry for 45 people, no mean feat!

We were there because we wanted to get a snap shot of what it is like to live at Laurieston and get a sense of the ups and downs of living in a community of this type and size.

The things we really liked about being there were:

• The friendliness and relaxed nature of the people who live there – it was a really good advert for community living
• The honesty with which they told us about the downs as well as the ups of community life
• The fact that we all chose not to watch TV in the evenings, but played lots of games instead
• Being practical, using our hands and feeling a sense of physical tiredness each evening
• Drinking warm milk straight after the cow had been milked (a high for Rosie as Adam thought this was minging!)
• Sleeping well coz it was quiet, we had worked hard and we weren’t having to make any decisions!
• Not having a mobile signal

The new and exciting things we learned there were:

• How to strip and re-slate a roof

From Laurieston Hall

• How to use limewash to sanitise a cow byre

From Laurieston Hall

• How to feed a week old bullock with milk – super cute!
• The very beginnings of bee keeping
• How to rebuild a dry stone wall

From Laurieston Hall

• That there are always people who pull more weight than others and you just have to accept that as part of community living
• The basics of milking a cow
• How to wrap a cheese and store it for maturing

It was a really good week overall, we made lots of friends, did plenty of good work, had heaps of fun and really felt that Laurieston is a place we would like to go back to and get to know on a deeper level in the future.

We are writing this from the beautiful Smiling Tree farm in Shropshire, where we are having a lovely time with the animals! We'll let you know all about it in our next post!

If you haven't already checked out our schedule page at the top of this page have a look to see where we are headed over the next few weeks x