Everything evolves.

When I started this blog (91 posts ago!!!) the main topic was our foray into car-less living, all be it almost car-less living.
Well we have certainly learnt a lot in the last ten months!
The main thing being that no, we can't live without a car, not in a permanent capacity.

A lot of things have changed since August 2009.

For one thing Kim now has work. Having gone self-employed he finds himself having to ditch the bike more and more in favour of the car as his work takes him further afield. For example we have to take a clients horse to be x-rayed on Friday. The vets don't have a mobile x-ray and so he will have to box the mare ten miles down the road and back.
Another blow was that one of his clients is now very ill and he has taken over a lot more work that he was originally going to do and they insisted he have the use of one of their cars so he can be up to their yard quickly in all weathers and also take over jobs such as collecting feed from the feed merchants.

Winter 2009 also conspired against our eager plans. The worst winter in thirty years hit Aberdeenshire and for the best part of four months it was impossible to cycle anywhere, with sporadically gritted and ploughed roads and grocery deliveries often not arriving or refusing to come down our lane, we were forced to drive into town to collect our shopping.

Then, after getting ourselves geared up to do nearly all our shopping within cycling distance, the local veggie cabin closed, meaning it was no long financially viable to do more than a fraction of our shopping locally.

All in all, despite our best efforts we now acknowledge that our rural location makes it incredibly hard (because nothing is IMPOSSIBLE!) to be 100% car-less.
With bad weather, no reliable and regular public transport, young children and animals (who always seem to need the vet when you are least able to get them there!) the whole thing was getting more than a little stressful!

Are we giving up?

Hell no!

Just being realistic.

I can still cycle to the little town and Kim still cycles to work when he is able, we still try and get the kids on the bikes to visit local areas. 

After a recent trip to the city of Edinburgh (FANTASTIC by the way!) I suddenly realised just how infrastructure poor we are here.
In a large town or city the majority of things you need are THERE, within walking distance or at a push easily reached by bus or train.  
I've been using the Tuesday bus into town for a while, but the two hours you get before having to catch the bus back home are woefully inadequate, you can do your shopping OR you can do jobs in town, but not both, so you spend the best part of £6 travelling and the whole morning away from home and will probably have to go back into town in a car as well at some stage in the week.

I don't feel we have failed so much as I feel let down by a country that takes relish in closing small local shops and businesses, cutting public transport and making life so hard for those not in te city to live car-less that you end up with country people migrating to the towns and richer town people taking over the country and villages.

So we have a newer outlook.
A do-what-we-can outlook that tries not too feel too bad when a car is a necessary evil.
Go through the options first and use the car last, but don't beat yourself up for having to use it outlook.

I think we can live with it.

HOWEVER......

This puts us in somewhat of a quandary.
How can we continue to call this blog "The (Almost) Car-Less Family" when we are now more the "Definitely Car Owning Family"?

So I feel a re-jig coming on.

A new name to go with the evolution of the blog.
I'm thinking about it at the moment and when I have half a dozen options we'll put it on a poll!!!

Feel free to throw any suggestions in there!      

Winter reflections on life and all that jazz.

Well the snow is going.
For the while at least.
In a usual year we have a bit of snow late November/ early December and then a large fall around February time, so it will be interesting to see what happens between now and Spring.

Although to be fair today was almost spring like.
Enough snow has melted to be able to do some work on the veggie garden, and I spent an hour forking over and adding much to the bed that the garlic is going in (late but..well). When the sun came out I actually had to take my fleece off!
Be moaning about heatstroke soon ;)

Anyway, today we took the kids out to the Bennachie Centre on the other side of the mountain.
Now to be honest we have all gone a little stir crazy the last month, what with being snowed in and all, and as the weather had broken and the temp was up we decided to go for it.
The child grill, I mean DOG grill of course..essential bit of kit ;)

Am I the only one who's kids moan and whinge about going for a walk but when you make them they have the best time?

They love this place because of the free visitor centre, a huge open plan modern wooden cabin with lots of tree and animal related information, interactive touchscreens, webcam hides the works.



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The walk as always was great, and the higher up the mountain we got the more snow was still about!
We stuck to one of the lower trails as it was late in the afternoon by the time we got there but the kids went free running through the woods at the side of the trail, jumping over ditches and logs and generally running off 4 weeks of house arrest





We talked about our car-less plans while out.
Obviously we had driven for this trip, the ice still thick in places, the daylight fading, the kids...well, being kids.
The plan had been to try and live car-less over the winter with a long term view of going completely car-less had we got on ok.
I think on reflection this is an un-realistic plan.
Don't get me wrong, our commitment to cycling and public transport remain, but the factors that rally against us, the isolated location, the lack of affordable public transport, the yucky winter weather (and lack of infrastructure for clearing roads etc) all conspire against winter car-less-ness.

There are also the kids to take into account.
If it was just me and Kim many things would be simpler. For example we have a wedding to go to in the spring. For two adults it would be easy and cheap to bus down south. With the kids though? For one thing it is a horrible HORRIBLE journey (14 hrs, late night wait in Glasgow bus station, no security and lots of drunks. toilet too unspeakable to think of ..and that's is it all goes well!), but the big issue is not our lack of "adventurous spirit" but pure finances. Seriously, it is cheaper for us to hire a car for a WEEK than it is to take 5 people on a bus.
There is something fundamentally wrong with that I think.
This same problem crops up locally as well.
Two train tickets to Aberdeen is do-able, five is beyond our means.

Bottom line is we can't keep the kids cooped up all winter only going from home to school and back again.

Our revised plan is this.
Our commitment to cycling spring through Autumn (and on suitable winter days also) is still strong. There are lots of places available in the locality to visit and we plan to do the lot this year.
The landrover stays. In the depths of winter when snow and ice are on the ground and daylight appears around 9.30 am and goes away just after lunch, we need a life line to the "outside world".
We already spent more time on bikes since we started than in the landrover so we still have credit as it were.
A once a week trip to a nice walk with some chips for dinner on the way home are surely not too much for kids to ask?

So its all good.
Our plans evolve and bend and change as needed.
After all, who wants to be so pure that your kids grow up to be raging consumers and petrol heads because they never got to do anything when they where growing up.
If it was just me and Kim we could hibernate for the winter, watch DVD's listen to the radio, chat, read.
But we have to remember that we share our house with three other people, lively curious, insatiable children who will not rest for winter and are not easily fobbed off with another game of snap.

Roll on spring :)

Which ethic should I follow today?

The trouble with making the choice to be compassionate about more than one thing, whether it be animals, the environment, children in sweat shops etc, is that some days you find it almost impossible not to run up against one while trying to do the other.
For example today we drove to town for two reasons, 1.The bus is more expensive (really!) and 2.We had a lot of things to do (and carry)and would have missed the bus.
So we immediately run up against problem number 1. We wanted to hit the charity shops but knew what we wanted would be too bulky to get on the bus. So is charity shop the way or should we have stayed home, spent MORE money and brought it new?? But why buy new when there is a cheaper 2nd hand one??

Breath!

The next thing is the goods I brought.
I was after two things in particular cushions and puppy stuff.
Well I fell at many hurdles there.
One of the cushions I brought was not only silk but filled with duck feathers!! A double anti-vegan whammy!
Then I found the perfect tiny collar for my new puppy...but in leather.

I could have course have brought both of these items in ethical materials, even eco-friendly materials, but they would have been new...manufactured for ME, using up carbon and resources and ....Lots of other stuff!!

So I think I have to draw a line.

You can drive yourself NUTS trying to be a super hero for everyone.
I think that buying from charity shops absolves me from a few nasties. I am in effect buying someone elses "rubbish" Things they no longer want and they COULD (and many people DO!) have thrown these items in a landfill rather than gift them to a charity shop.

Now don't get me wrong.
I wouldn't go and buy a leather jacket or fur coat because it is someones rubbish, I would feel very uncomfortable doing that, but a wee collar for my pup? (99p!!! Never been used!!) or a cushion for my soon to be built sofa? (75p!!!)no. Im not going to feel torn over these.

The charity shop is a win win.
I get to buy items I need (also brought some Xmas pressies for people today!)at prices I can afford. I not only make a donation to charity BUT I also keep unwanted goods out of landfills.
Also, in the case of books, movies, CD's etc I often take them back a few weeks later, so the charity shop gets to sell them again.

You need to pick your battles for how you live.
I would love to buy all our clothes and shoes from ethical, fairtrade shops but honestly can't.
At least by buying clothes from Charity shops I am re-using something someone didn;t want AND I am NOT buying first hand cheap made-in-a-sweatshop clothing.

Pick your battles, draw your lines, live your life.

When you open your eyes......

The trouble with trying to follow a little trod green path through life is when you realise that all the everyday things you did and took for granted come with a consequence and there is never NEVER a correct answer.

Life is not black and white.

When we vowed to give up the car for stupid journeys we accepted that every time we DID take the Land rover out we would need to justify it to ourselves. So when we felt sorry for ourselves early this week and wanted some shop brought comfort (hey..we had been ill! In the school holidays AND it was raining..I stand by my choice *heehee*) I made sure that we packed as much into the trip as possible.
So as well as the shop we also took all the re-cycling we could find, went to the charity shop to buy junk to make Halloween costumes (and books!) as well as taking stuff to them. We stopped by the chemist and the art supply shop, and took out cash for at home money from the ATM.
I can accept that, again....not black and white.

However one thing I have been putting to the back of my mind for a while is the tumble dryer.

Now ask anyone of a green bent what they think of the tumble drier in relation to the environment and they will shrink back hissing like Nosferatu from sunlight. In fact it is almost universally agreed on that these machines are basically the devil dressed in white and making your clothes soft and dry.

We have one.

We brought one just over four years ago after struggling for years without one.
I used to hang washing from clothes horses in front of the fire and line dry when possible.


Now I LOVE to line dry. I get a 1950's housewife satisfaction from getting sweet smelling dry clothes for free on a sunny day (or even a grey day when the wind is in the right direction) but I live in the north east of Scotland, my nearest sea is the north sea, we get a lot of rain (and snow and ice ...), so a lot of the time washing was indoors.

So far so green right?

Well, although I could put up with the smell of slowly moldering laundry my walls couldn't.
Our house is old (1800's)and made of stone, the insulation isn;t fantastic, We have done what we can but the way the house is built limits us with things like wall cavity filling.
The plaster board on my walls rotted.

You could poke a finger through it.

The condensation from the drying laundry killed my walls and covered them in mould.
As a family of five who live an outdoors life you can imagine that even being a little grubby we still get through a load of washing a day.
And what about duvets? Bed sheets? Yes I can wait for a sunny day but what happens when one of my small children has a night time accident or (as we had last week) vomits in their bed?

Try drying a duvet on a clothes horse in front of the fire.

So when we brought our tumble dryer I was told "No more drying in the house!"
Apart from the ruined plaster board, mouldy walls are not good for asthmatics!

This was fine, I still do lots of drying on the line and only use the dryer when I have to ....until....it broke.

Just a drive belt but we didn;t get round to fixing it. The weather was nice and it didn't matter, and that little voice in the back of my head said..."maybe we DON'T need a dryer?"

Until this week, when illness and rain (been over 36 hrs STRAIGHT of torrential rain and gales so far) meant that my bathroom floor was carpeted in dirty washing and my living room was steaming as I desperately tried to dry washed bed sheets and yes, duvets in front of my fire.

I did what I had to do.

I got online, ordered the new drive belt. 24hrs later Kim fitted it and I have to say the poor thing hasn't stopped since yesterday.

So what do you do?

The occasional use of a dryer is surely better than re-platerbording your house every couple of years, better than having to take stronger asthma meds?
But I still get that niggle in the back of my head, the one that purses its lips and sniffs and proclaims that THEY never use a tumble dryer.

SO what do YOU do??

Public transport and other things that SHOULD make car-less easier....but don't.

I get angry at the lack of reliable public transport.
Yesterday I had a Dr's appointment and caught the ONLY bus into the little town, but because I had planned on walking home I only brought a one way.

Trouble was it then rained like stink and I couldn't be sure the bus would come back through town. No one else had got on or off when I did and if that happens the driver often misses the town out on the way back!
My Dr's appointment had left me a little sorry for myself and I *shame* called Kim to come get me in the Landrover.
Do I call that falling off the wagon?? Or falling off the Bike ? ;)


The point is I wouldn't have cycled in that day and had to rely on the bus, but the bus can not be relied upon.

Is this the main reason people feel they HAVE to own a car??

A couple of years ago Kim tried taking public transport into work. He would catch the commuter bus at 7am and it would take him into town to catch the train. Trouble was on more than on occasion the bus would be late, or in some cases not turn up at all.
This would mean he would miss his train and have to run home and drive into work. Of course though he had paid for a season ticket, but at the end of this period he worked out that using public transport (AND his own when public transport failed him) had cost him significantly MORE than if he had just driven.

So what is the incentive????

How can governments ask you to drive less but give you no alternative??

Lets face it not everyone is able to grab two wheels. What about the elderly, the heavily pregnant, the ill, the injured?

Any government serious about fighting climate change should be pushing for more reliable public transport for everyone.
When there are only 2 buses out of my village (one 5 days a week to train station, leave 7am, home 6.30 pm. One bus to BIG town once a week, only 2 hrs allowed for visit before coming home again)what incentive is there for the villagers to give up their cars?

Parents want to take their children to activities after school or at the weekend. People work in the week and are unable to use the bus into the big town. Other people have different working start and finish times and so are unable to use the commuter bus and train.

What we need are incentives. A tax break? Low fares? A cash incentive after so many journeys maybe? Lay on the transport and make it attractive.

Three or four buses a day into town would cover a lot of people, incentives to buy season tickets would mean buses would not be in danger of running at a loss.
Where can we take it from here?

Miles and miles of smiles :D

I'm surprised at how many miles we are notching up on two wheels as a family.

Yesterday Kim took Ollie to art club in town on the bikes.They tried out their new lights as the evenings are drawing in and their 7pm finish means that, although not dark, it is getting "dimpsy".
We still haven't decided what to do in the winter about art club, when its already dark by 4.30 pm or earlier. I would love to try and find something similar on the weekends for him to do, otherwise we will have to drive him.
A couple of kids from school also go so I'll try and work out a car sharing rota if anyone is interested..if they don't mind their kids in the back of a landrover once every 3 or 4 weeks that is ;)
At least that way we are not only car sharing for us , but cutting others emissions as well!

Well that's my opinion and I'm gonna stick to it *heehee*

Me and Kim Cycled to Kellockbank garden centre today so a round trip of about 11 and 1/2 miles!
I tried to convince him that I needed a bag of compost but he wasn't impressed (meanie!).





The reason we went was to pick up our magazines. I love The Green parent magazine and particularly wanted this issue as it had a home education feature in it.
We also brought Permaculture magazine.
Both of these are published every two months so I don;t have to cycle that far again until November!!

The weather has been so lovely these last couple of weeks, ideal for me to get started in cycling again. Today was no exception so I remembered to take my camera today and show you the top of the road between our village and Town.





I have to say these photos do nothing to show you how steep the climb is! We live in a basin, this means that every time we get on a bike it is uphill straight away! Of course for every hill you pant and puff up, there is a nice long glide down (and visa versa! *groan*)

But its been getting better and better.

I'm feeling fitter than I have for years, my asthma is getting better, I have an inside thigh "burn" which MUST be a good thing!

Time to think about investing in some damn good waterproofs soon....I have no intention of letting a little rain dampen my smile :D

The Land Rover and extreme recycling.

When it comes to travel of the 4 wheeled kind I'm afraid there is only one car for my family.

The Land rover, that quintessential British car, is the ultimate in green driving...so long as it's done properly.
Granted, mile for mile of course your hybrid is going to look greener and cleaner...but....

But.

Its all relative. I mean if I do 500 miles a week (low end of the mileage in this area) in a hybrid but only 2 miles a week in a land rover..which is better?

Take our Land rover.
It's been a month since we got this car and it still hasn't left the yard. Granted it wasn't running for the last Three weeks but here it is ...a week after being deemed "road worthy" and there hasn't been a reason to take it out.

Also there is the beautiful art of fixing the Land Rover.

Here we have a picture of my darling talented husband ;)







See that green wire there?
That is the choke..the wire that helps the engine start....guess where it came from?
Owens old bike that's where!

See what I mean!
That's HIGH art!

He's a very talented member of our family, to showcase another talent (in case you thought he was a one trick pony) here is another picture showing the beautiful "pantry" he built me.
OK, its shelves in the hall, but its handy handy handy!
The side is from the lid of an old seeder that is slowly being used in various home projects, the shelves themselves are cannibalised from an old cheap shelving unit.




Looking around my house now I can see so many built in shelves that we have made from scrap, so many bits of wood and metal that should by rights be in a landfill somewhere...Reduce, Reuse...and of course in the last instance, always re-cycle ;)

Money and other ways to make your life choices that much harder.

There is a hard truth when it comes to doing without the traditional car aspect of getting your family and goods around.

Since being car-less (Landrover has yet to leave the yard :P)I have done a lot of digging around, looking at blogs, reading articles of people who live without a car in their lives.
One of the prevailing common traits ( and although I say common I KNOW its not everyone, before anyone jumps up and down saying "not me!!")is money, as in pleanty of.

Now I don't mean RICH.
Not David Beckham, Donald Trump rich, but nicely comfortable middle class rich. The sort of rich where the juggling of bills is an exception rather than a rule, the kind of house where shopping does not need to be totted up and the none essentials put sadly back on the shelves.

A classic quip is something along the lines of " ...Of course getting bulky things can be tricky, but if I need a sofa DFS deliver so its not really a problem...."

....But it is a problem, for me anyway.

If I need a sofa the furniture shop is not the first place I look. The first place I go sofa hunting is Freecycle and if nothing comes of that then the free papers for a cheap second hand sofa.
Here lies the problem.
Although the big furniture chains will happily deliver your large item, very few private sellers/ freecylers will.

An example is this....
I saw in the free papers last week an unused trail gator, unwanted gift £20.
Now these retail here at @ £60....and I need 2 of them..this should have been fantastic but....it was 25 miles away no where near a bus or train route and much too heavy for it to be worth posting.
I would have used about £5-7 of fuel..just a little over postage and packing from a shop, so I would have still paid a lot less than buying new.

So we see..the comfortable "middle class rich" car-less person would not have been looking in the free papers for a trail gator..they would have just ordered one online and paid the full price.

My bike came through freecycle BUT the girl who brought it was coming to my house anyway to pick up some items I'd listed.

This is the bit I am finding the hardest. Not the day to day stuff of shopping, but the "too good to miss" items on freecycle, the bulky things like second hand windows and bikes that we need to collect.

We are so far away from most of these things (Our freecycle cover's a very large area) that it is getting to the stage where it is almost not worth having it.

How do other people in this situation cope???

Wheels..I got dem' :D

I have a bike!!!!

Granted it is not new, it needs some TLC, a new front tyre and break, some tweaking and adjusting..but I don't care!!!

I had posted a wanted on my local freecycle along with some offered items, and the girl who wanted my stuff said she could try and get me a bike!
She volunteers for Aberdeen BeCyle ( http://becycle.wordpress.com/ )and a while back (BEFORE the dead car :P ) I had freecycled some redundant bikes to her. They had been left in our steading when we moved in and where in need of more repair that we were capable of performing. So she turned up on behalf of BeCycle and took all 4 of the on.

I guess it must be Karma then. She read of our wish to cut down on the car and sourced me one to keep :)

Some other news (Oy..24 hrs is a long time in blogland!)we have also found ourselves in possession of a landrover!

It was always on the cards that a Landrover would appear here again, to my mind they have the worst reputation among the "green" fraternity but is actually one of the most environmentally sound car choices in my humble opinion.
Lets have a look at some facts and figures.

1. A series Landrover is basically a large meccano set. Anyone with an owners manual could strip it down and put it back together again. 99% of repairers can be undertaken by the owner.
2. Series Landrover parts are stupidly easy to get hold off. There are companies all over the country (and the world!) who specialise in "pre-loved" parts. The ultimate in re-cycling!
3. Sensibly driven a well maintained series (diesel) will do @ 25 miles to the gallon...not earth shattering but when compared to a modern car.....

(2008 EPA Average All Cars - 21 MPG)


"The Environmental Protection Agency reported that the average performance of new, 2008 model cars and trucks was 20.8 miles per gallon in 2008." -- Boston Globe, 9/19/08


"Ford's Model T, which went 25 miles on a gallon of gasoline, was more fuel efficient than the current Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicle -- which manages just 16 miles per gallon." -- Detroit News, 6/4/03

Sobering thoughts.


The biggest thing I have for the Landrover though is the fact that they never stop. There are still series I's working day in day out as primary cars for their owners, cars that are as much as 60 years old!!
When you look at a new off the "shelf" car you know that in 1 year it will be worth half what you paid for it, within 2 years something major will have had to have been replaced, within 5 years the car is a bargain basement car and within 7 it is most likely in a junkyard. In that one cars life time its original owner could have been through 4 or 5 cars and why? Why is this obsolescence built in?? To keep the car industry in big bucks that's why.

So we have a car but we haven't given up on our goals. Also if I know Landrovers (and our budget) we will be mostly car-less anyway while husband spends free time "tinkering" under the bonnet..ah, Ce La Vie ;)
Anyway, I did have a "wow how do we do that then?" moment, all the bikes need at "mot", Eldest child's need new breaks (too many sliding sideways stops)and the gears checking over, middles needs a special chain, and mine needs all I said about at the beginning of this post. How to get them there *sigh*

20 miles away, no near train..... me thinks its time to buy a bike repair book ;)

Sometimes the money Gods smile on us....

Well, some weekend!
We managed to sell the broken car (£450) which was fantastic and means we can pay the garage bill with some left over. They guy who had bought it wanted it for spares for HIS Frontera but declared ours so tidy that he is going to do it the other way round, so he went away a happy camper.

THEN.....

I get a phone call from my Mum telling me that she and Dad have decide to give us £1000 towards a car!!!

WOW!

This means that husband will be able to not only buy the old Landrover he has his eye on BUT that the money we would have had to pay for one can now go towards all our bike stuff!!

What?...Do I hear grumbles of "humf....thought they where going car less?" at the back there?
Well I never said we would never get another car (hence the "almost" in the title).
The aim is to still get mobile under our own steam, but life where we live without a car at all....not impossible but very very hard.

I talk to people who have no car at all and they all have the same thing in common, the live in the city, they live in a part of the world that doesn't take glee in dumping feet of snow on you for 2 months of the year.

The plan is still to kit us out with the equipment to cycle as a family safely and in most weathers, the plan is still to use the public transport that is available to us.

The check list should run...
1) if I can walk I'll walk.
2) if I can't walk I'll cycle.
3) if I can't cycle I'll take the bus/ train.
4) if I can't take public transport I will see if it can be delivered.
5) Only if I have exhausted ALL of the above options will I use a car.

I am not anti-car per say, but I AM anti-wasteful journeys. The village school here is 5 minutes walk from my house and I live the furthest away. However on several occasions I have seen ALL the other village children driven to school, or driven BACK to school for after school clubs! Not one child in the village lives more than 4or 5 minutes walk away...so WHAT if it rains! Carry an umbrella, wear a rain coat and wellies!!

I think you can't be anti-car if you then expect things to be delivered to your door (groceries etc) but you CAN accept that it is more Eco friendly for one small van to bring groceries to 8 or 9 houses than for 8 or 9 cars to drive to town.

If it wasn't for the fact that we have the horses I would seriously consider a move to a more urban area, so long as I could still grow all my veggies!!
I read with envy the people who talk of cycle lanes and bike racks and no car zones and eye up our fast car designed roads and shudder.

BUT!!

But we will solider on....I can't get fit in a car!
Although when there is 3 foot of snow in February I suspect that I may slink into the passenger seat of our landrover pretty quickly :P

The car dies...no flowers please....

Our car, a highly polished, highly confusing, HIGHLY electric based, Frontera died.
Time of Death was record at @ 9am on Tuesday the 4th of August on our way to the doctors in the town.
It ground to a halt outside our village and has not moved under its own steam since.
On the long walk back through the stubble fields (in inappropriate clothing..of course, well no one had planned on walking had they!)the Husband and I discussed what we were going to do.
We already had a good idea that this was a BIG bill.
We have no money, in fact church mice are Donald trump compared to us at the moment. A big garage bill was not part of the plan this month, we had to eat, buy school supplies for our three kids, we had a barn full of straw arriving.
"Well its OK!" I said to him with a forced gaiety usually reserved for very small children on the edge of a large melt down, "We can finally have a go at living without the car!"
His glare was almost enough to shut me up.
Almost.
So I prattled on happily about reduced carbon footprints and exercise and money saving and the idea began to grow.
Now at this point I should say the reason this is called "The (almost) car-less family" is because it would be impossible to live where we live without a car forever. The plan is for Husband to buy an old landrover, which means that for about 9 months of the year he will be working on it and we will be without a car anyway....but also that an old landrover is not a car to be hammered around the hills and vales of Aberdeenshire willy nilly.
Well the final consensus is that we will use the Landrover for emergency journeys (Doctor, vet etc)and for planned trips into the nearest large town for those things that cannot be delivered or cycled to.
Well..it'll be a FINE adventure, won't it children...won't it?