Emma Macalister Hall
When I decided to keep the Torrisdale blog updated, I had imagined a rich variety of content – light-hearted essays depicting castle life, musings about our latest distillery developments, seasonal recipes, fun pet updates. Instead, all I seem to write about are storms and the subsequent chaos wreaked.
The build up to Storm Eowyn began last week with mutterings of something big and bad coming to Ireland and west and central Scotland on Friday. By Thursday, school closures were announced, panic buying ensued and we told our staff to stay home.
It felt a bit like lockdown at first. I had the urge to bake banana bread but was hampered by the lack of bananas. I made soup instead, lights already flickering threateningly. Local outages were being reported on Whatsapp. We felt we could lose power at any minute and worse (for the kids), WIFI!
The winds picked up. Visually there wasn’t much to see – tree tops swaying, racing clouds but nothing too dramatic. It got loud and scary but we stayed put and comforted the pets who sensed something was up.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” Probably. And it would be LOUD. We couldn’t hear trees falling over the noise of the wind so were blissfully unaware of the sheer scale of the damage until we tentatively ventured out at 5pm.
We couldn’t have prepared ourselves for the devastation. It was an arboreal crime scene. We picked our way though fallen branches, hoping hard that nothing of significance had succumbed. That hope was quickly dashed when we got to the main avenue. A beech had landed on one of the old bridges, further up a giant silver fir, 4.5 metre in diameter, lay stricken, nothing more than an obstacle in our way. You could build a house in the root bowl. We clambered on, working our way back up towards granny’s drive. Halted again. Another beech. Further up, near the distillery road end, two huge scots pine, one narrowly missing our beautiful apple sculpture. Gentle giants reduced to firewood.
And so it continued. At the main gate a silver birch landed on the roof of South Lodge. Luckily no guests were in residence. The main roads fared no better with several blockages north and south.
They are our Ents, our tree-friends, they have been here longer than us and we would never assume to outlive them. I find it ironic they were taken out by Éowyn, another Tolkein good guy. She was meant to be on our side.
The clean up has already begun. Local heroes coming to help. Our own head groundsman giving up his Saturday. It will be an epic task but Torrisdale is resilient. Storms can’t destroy the magic. We will mourn the loss of the trees but we will leave parts of them in situ to support other life and create new habitats. And we will re-plant and continue to nurture what we have and do right by this unique environment.
