The structural frame of the Monachyle Beag Bothy is now finally up - and even though our finished article will be almost invisible due to its materiality…there’s no hiding a massive shiny silver frame on a bottle green mountainside. We have always enjoyed taking in the spectacular panoramas from up at the site but now we are enjoying playing “who-can-spot-the-big-shiny-baptist-church-from-furthest-away”. Structural frames always look great, they’re pure engineering and its always a wee bit of a shame to cover them up, but at least large parts of this frame will still be visible when we’re finished. 

We put lots of effort into our project’s foundations - as you would expect. Supervising ground surveys, reviewing our engineer’s proposals, examining all of the issues that will relate to the performance and longevity of the building. It is a little boring but absolutely essential. So it rests one’s mind somewhat when you find a building that has survived for nearly a century with no foundations at all. We’ll be turning this little oddity into something exciting but rest assured - it’ll have decent foundations!

Building things halfway up mountains can be a bit tricky…I can see why people generally stick to more accessible sites. We had the Monachyle Beag Bothy foundations nearly designed but niggling doubts brought us back to the site not with a 1.5T mini digger but a proper machine. So no rock, just big boulders and a host of other issues to solve on a site where - helpfully, almost no quarries will deliver crushed stone. Tom, our engineer (helpfully holding a spade in the picture) is designing somewhat out of his comfort zone!