"Some sort of summer seems to have arrived at last here in Angus. Despite the cool evenings and the birch leaves beginning to turn a yellowish tinge, the days over the last week have been really warm. We had our first partridge shoot of the year on Saturday. It went well but I felt more like swimming in the burn to cool off than walking around in heavy tweeds in the sweltering temperatures. For us it is now is very much the heart of the sporting season. September and October are the best months for red deer stalking, grouse shooting and also for fishing our small beat of the river South Esk. We let out quite a lot of our sporting to help make ends meet, so it is also a good time for cash flow. We tend to have a late fishing season as our part of the South Esk is up high and almost as far as you can get from where it meets the sea at the Montrose Basin, and at this time of year we are beginning to fill up with salmon ready to spawn.

It is a great time of year to be in Scotland... If you get this glorious weather of course! Today I had to go up onto the moor, or “the hill” as it’s generally known, to inspect the hydro-electric system. I was up there at about 7.30am just as the sun was rising and it rays were hitting the hill. As the sun rose, more and more of the hill was exposed to sunlight and as the sun starting reaching their territories, red grouse started calling. Soon the whole hill was alive with the sound of grouse calling. The cock grouse were standing on rocks and tussocks telling others this was their territory. It was a truly amazing sight and sound. I hope I never get blasé about mornings like these.

One of the biggest projects undertaken since we moved here has been constructing a hydro-electric system that generates electricity using the main burn (stream) on the estate, driving it through a turbine before returning the water back to the burn. It has taken over four years since we first conceived the project until completion earlier this year. Planning and environmental surveys took a long time, but we have been left with a source of generating renewable energy that is almost totally invisible. All the pipes are buried and even the turbine house is sunk into a hillside so it too is almost invisible. We sell all the power into the Grid. It has been costly and we have had our fair share of teething problems, in fact it is still not working totally as planned, but we are producing power, we are selling it and big projects like this always take a while to bed down properly... Or so I keep telling myself!"