In celebration of UK Volunteer Week we have started out on a new endeavour in community & cultural exchange. We celebrate two years in Argyll this month and are hoping that the restoration of the gardens and the move towards sustainable living will allow an opportunity to share this journey with many people from many places.
Our first house guest this month is Luc, a gap year student from France. He has been improving his English and learning about living in Argyll. We have tackled invasive rhododendron, built a home for the family hens and tried to catch fish to feed us. He uncovered another little bridge across the stream so it has been named ‘Luc’s Bridge’. It is almost the same construction as ‘Ben’s Bridge’, lower in the garden which was uncovered by 15 yr old Ben, a garden helper and family friend who visited last year. He and his mother were among the first of many friends to work with us in the garden. They planted the seed of using the garden for volunteering and community building and it inspired us to see them working together, they are both great gardeners.
Take a seat
Now the seed has germinated and our children are already practicing their fledgling language skills by playing board games and eating together with our visitor. Next week we hope to receive a Magician who is travelling the UK coast on his bike, performing pop-up busking events and raising funds for sustainable farm projects in Ghana. We have been overwhelmed by applications from volunteers all over the world and the children are becoming very interested in helping select volunteers, mainly using criteria based on whether they are likely to know how to play Pokémon!
So another chapter of this journey begins. A new community of travellers to share the path with, it is certainly going to be interesting and I look forward to opening our home and sharing our passion for this wonderful landscape with those who seek to know it better.
The Gloucester Crew (now in Wild Argyll) 