Edinburgh or Bust

Our next WWOOFing adventure didn’t quite go to plan, but thankfully not in a ‘that Devon Farm’ kind of way. I had a horrible cold for the entire time but Laura has managed to trump my pathetic sniffles!

Phantassie was quite different to all the places we have previously WWOOFed at, it is a largeish Organic market garden that supplies a veg box scheme and local restaurants with organic veg. It has a couple of big fields with very happy organic free range chickens in, a field of potatoes, beans and other things and also has a huge and very pretty Victorian walled garden where a lot of the salad is grown.





It had a slightly ‘communely’ feel to it as there were other WWOOFers, and permanent members of staff (some who also lived there) and all were very friendly and all were good fun making the working time go very quickly! Everyday a different member of staff would cook for everyone else at lunchtime and we WWOOFers cooked for ourselves in the evenings, picking whatever took our fancy fresh from the gardens – delicious!



There were a number of interesting characters working, but the most memorable was a slightly crazy old Aussie guy who held a lot of opinions and liked to share them whether you wanted to hear them or not. When he saw a badge on my hat he went off on this very memorable rant: (for full comic effect please read this out loud in your finest and loudest Australian accent) “I BETTER READ WHAT IT SAYS ON YOUR HAT MATE. ‘I HAVE MORE TREES TO CLIMB’. YOU LIKE CLIMBING TREES? I BET YOU HAVEN’T DONE WHAT I’VE DONE UP TREES. ONCE I CLIMBED RIGHT TO THE TOP OF ONE, GOT A POSSUM BY THE TAIL AND BROUGHT IT ALL THE WAY DOWN AGAIN CLIMBING ONE HANDED. HAVE YOU DONE THAT? I BET YOU HAVEN’T DONE THAT. AND ANOTHER TIME, I CLIMBED RIGHT UP A TREE, SAWED A BRANCH OFF WHICH HAD A BEES NEST HANGING OFF IT, CARRIED IT DOWN ONE HANDED AND WALKED A MILE CARRYING IT. RIGHT THROUGH A SCHOOL PLAYGROUND TOO. AND I DIDN’T GET STUNG ONCE. HAVE YOU DONE THAT? AND THIS OTHER TIME, I CLIMBED A TREE AS TALL AS THAT ONE RIGHT THERE CARRYING A MATTRESS, PUT IT ON THE TOP AND LAY ON IT. SUNBATHING ON TOP OF THE TREE. LIKE A TREEHOUSE. BUT WITH NO ROOF. HAVE YOU DONE THAT?” Amazingly I had done none of these things…

The first day working was good, the work was very varied, and we did several different tasks and none of them for too long. And the weather was hot – almost too hot by the end of the day. The second day wasn’t quite as good, we worked entirely in the walled garden, mainly planting lettuces and by the end of it I was trying to weigh up in my mind which was more boring – fingerprints or lettuces! And it was very hot and sweaty again, and my cold was wearing me out, poor me!



But after work was over, and we’d had a refreshing shower and some food we decided it would be a good idea to play tennis on the farm’s grass courts with Thomas (a French WWOOFer) and Tony (a WWOOFer turned permanent member of staff). It was a lovely cool evening after the balmy day, and the tennis was great – all of us being pretty evenly matched and enjoying it. Then Laura chased after a shot that had gone quite wide (and bounced a few times!), caught her ankle in a drainage ditch running down the side of the court and went over. And her ankle swelled up like a huge bulbous balloon! Oh dear… So Thomas and I carried Laura back to our caravan, and fetched Rose who is a Herbalist who looked at Laura’s ankle and then made a salve to help reduce the swelling.

We decided to leave it until Thursday morning and see what the ankle was like, but come the next day it wasn’t much better. Laura was unable to put any weight on it and I was having to carry her everywhere by piggy-back! A trip to the local doctor, then Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for an X-Ray resulted in the diagnosis of damaged ligaments and the need for several weeks of complete rest. No work - oh dear!

Today we had to leave and I drove us 300+ miles south to Shropshire so Laura can convalesce and knit cakes whilst watching tennis (no playing) and I can try to be helpful for a week or so… My Mum has even managed to source some crutches from the local Red Cross so that I no longer have to piggy-back Laura about!


So, just as we were getting into the swing of things at Phantassie, our adventures in Scotland have come to a somewhat premature end. We didn’t even get to visit Edinburgh (apart from the hospital!). But at least this didn’t happen at the start of our trip, which would have prevented us from seeing some truly stunning scenery and having lots of great experiences, and at least the ankle wasn’t broken. We hadn’t planned to travel to Ireland until the start of August anyway, so hopefully Laura will be fit and ready for our WWOOFing to continue by then!