Merry Christmas 2022

Dear Friends of Balintore,

welcome to the annual Christmas blog entry! 2022 has been quite a year for most people as we distance ourselves from Covid, and this is equally true for everyone involved with Balintore Castle.

The restoration work has continued, but my personal involvement is very limited in terms of time as I am working full time for the UK Meteorological Office. I do my best to attend to "castle admin" in the evenings. This shortage of time explains the limited blog entries: 28 this year compared to a record 56 last year. Far too much time has been taken up attending to the unnecessary problems created by Angus Council.

My builder Gregor is still doing good work at Balintore, but he is now moonlighting part time at another architecturally impressive Victorian shooting lodge in Glen Isla, called Knockshannoch. Knockshannoch is just 6 miles from Balintore. As Gregor has been working for me for ten years, I understand that a little bit of a change is good for him so I do my best not to pout too much. :-)

One of the highlights of this year, was a guided tour round Knockshannoch by the new owners. They also have a huge restoration project ahead of them, though not quite as daunting a one as Balintore. The building has very definitely gone into the right hands, as the couple have an understanding and appreciation of the architecture that means they will do the very best by the building.

Strangely enough, I thought my days of seeing other restoration projects were over, but over the course of the year I was invited to see Park Hall Manor outside Manchester, Llwyn Celyn in South Wales and Gwrych Castle in North Wales. All these visits got me very excited and enthusiastic, which is confirmation that despite the enormous hardships involved, Balintore is the right path for me. Park Hall Manor and Knockshannoch are private residences, so naturally I am discreet and did not blog about these.

My Belgian friend and friend of Balintore, Karel came to visit in the autumn. We decided to turn up on spec for lunch at the Fife Arms Hotel in Braemar. Unfortunately, they were fully booked, but a staff member said if we could wait an hour, they could fit us in. An hour was just the right amount of time to see the flowers outside the gates of Balmoral Castle. To witness the massed ranks of flowers laid by the public was a special thing, and somehow we became part of history in doing so. I am so glad we made this diversion, even though I would never have planned a dedicated trip just to see the flowers. 

I was also grateful that I had held a special castle open day on the Platinum Jubilee weekend, as my instinct was that Her Maj would not be with us for much longer, and this was my little gesture of homage during her lifetime. I am not a Royalist as such, but I am a close observer of history and history in the making, and believe by reconciling ourselves with the bigger picture, we can become better human beings.

"In Memoriam" flowers for Queen Elizabeth at Balmoral Castle

After my usual Christmas with friends in Norfolk last year, I decided that to spend my first Christmas at Balintore, and my Norfolk friends joyfully agreed to come up. This was on the principle of "I have a castle so I should use it!". It helps that my Norfolk friends are fantastic cooks, and won't let me anywhere near my own kitchen - heavenly! :-)

Driving back to the castle for Christmas was an unexpected adventure. Although the weather was bitterly cold, the roads from Oxfordshire to Balintore were clear and the long journey passed without incident. However, just five miles short of the castle, snow and ice appeared on the roads, and my ABS started cutting-in with its characteristic judder on icy bends. Extreme caution was required while driving.  

I started up the castle drive in 4 wheel drive in first gear. After 20 yards there was a strange man standing on the side of the drive with a torch. Aha, I had been phoned a couple of times during the drive by a German chap wanting to visit the castle. I had explained that  I would be back at the castle around 7PM if he was prepared to wait until evening. 

After establishing that the stranger, Lin, was the chap who had been phoning, I invited him into my passenger seat, so we could continue up the drive. However. we could make no progress on the snow and ice, in fact we were going backwards down the drive, no matter what I did with gears, brakes and steering wheel. I decided to reverse back onto the road at the bottom of the drive. Lin shouted at one stage "the road goes the other way" but in the dark and white-out conditions I had missed the sharp bend in the drive and was now dangling and rocking over the edge of a precipice with back and front wheels spinning in mid air.  "Beached" is the correct technical term Lin used. My car was well and truly stuck: it was just very good luck we had not gone over the edge. My neighbour Rob was able to pull me out later in the evening with his powerful Defender with special tyres - huge thanks to Rob.

dangling over the edge in the bleak midwinter

By an amazing coincidence, six Chinese AirBnB guests arrived just after Lin and I got to the castle. They can only have made it to the kitchen wing on foot via a long trek through the snow. Later I found a message from them "It's very dark, and we are very frightened.", which they must have sent before I turned up.

It turns out Lin is half-German (mother from Berlin) and half-Chinese (father from Beijing) and he was able to talk to my guests in Chinese, when I gave everyone a tour round the castle. What are the odds of a Chinese reunion on a remote snow-covered mountainside in Angus? 

I made Lin some dinner and put him up for the night, as road conditions were shocking. He mentioned that today was turning into an amazing adventure for him. I said that I couldn't explain why, but somehow every day at the castle is like this, so this was the norm for me.

At 4AM in the morning water started pouring into the room I was sleeping in at the castle, so I had to abandon ship. The next morning, I understood why. After frozen conditions for a fortnight, the ice-melt has started in the middle of the night. The next morning the snow has largely gone, and by the following morning the 3 foot of snow round the castle, with the icy base that has caused the drive to be impassable, has completely vanished.

I had asked Gregor to take a look at the leaks in the castle roof while I was away, but ironically when I had been away, due to the freezing weather, there were no leaks. These only started up again when I got back to the castle.

Last Thursday, we had the first fire in one of the upper floor fireplaces for at least 60 years - this first fire is shown in the video. The last resident of the castle died in 1963, so the fireplaces have lain unused since then, until of course my restoration started in 2007. My builder Gregor swept the chimney earlier in the week, and removed 2 large rubble bags of grot. I don't normally have time to sit around a fire, but with friends staying over Christmas, fireside chats are just what the doctor ordered.

Anyhow, a Merry Christmas to everyone and best wishes for the New Year,

David