Living in Rural Northern Ireland | Annie and Nik | Spring 2025

Welcome to our vlog! Video we took that’s cobbled together into an overview of Spring 2025 in Gortin, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on the side of the Sperrin Mountains. A look around our stomping grounds and the beginnings of our casual prepping and NI gardening efforts. Well, we had to start somewhere… Please bear with us. It’s early days, and we only have our phones to record on, but here’s where we test the concept.

Nice people who help us and give us things:
The Sauna Shack, Gortin Glenn, Co. Tyrone: https://thesaunashack.uk
EJM McKeown LTD – Builders Merchants: https://ejmmckeown.com

Music from this video:
The Higher Land by Ten String Story
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/ten-string-story/the-higher-land
License code: EZPWGJH3FJQMIWES

Check ‘em out!: https://share.uppbeat.io/0lvp8hvs92mi

See you at the end of Summer.

#northernireland #countytyrone #gardening

[Music] Éowyn. A lot of it is managed woodland, 
which doesn’t do very well because all the trees are very spindly with s**t 
rootstock. They’re not native trees, and a lot of them came down. But a lot of 
everything everywhere came down, to be fair. So there’s a back road that goes over the tops. And there are some amazing views. And about once a month?
Yeah. It’s not that often. We like to walk the back road. But we can’t 
do it with the dog, cuz Jake is insanely old. But so are we. So we’ll shoot 
some views as we go along. Hopefully, we’ll see “The Hills of Donegal.” 
Yeah, and some cool mountain bikes, cuz the mountain biking here is primo – if 
a bit managed. But uh yeah, it’s good. We’ll shoot some footage of the devastation and 
put some music behind this bit… Yeah. Just to show you, we were talking about 
Storm Éowyn earlier. This is just some of the devastation that we can see. Storm Éowyn 
was pretty sobering for us. We lost power for? 5 days. 5 days, something like that. And we had to 
keep our lizard alive, and our aged parent alive, and there’s things you just don’t think about… 
Like, well, the freezer, at least 2/3 of it turned to mush. Car! Car. So we have to keep the lizard 
warm, so we had to heat rocks in front of the fire so that the lizard could stay warm overnight. 
Things like that. And while we have solar, most of that solar goes to heating the water and 
other stuff. And the offsprings computer things. Yeah. Well, while we’re not going in prepper yet. 
Yet! We have started stockpiling more things and going through our tins and looking at other ways 
of preserving stuff – which we’ll be covering in other videos. Yeah, like a sort of casual prepping 
if you like. Yeah. Yeah. Still no cammo yet. Yet! But yeah, I think the way the world is now you’ve 
got to be a little bit prepared. You’ve got to expect brown outs and blackouts and, especially 
in Northern Ireland, even before even before the likes of Storm Éowyn, the power probably goes out 
for an hour a week? Yeah. Yeah, usually overnight, but it really did disrupt the village cuz it 
it was like months before we got 4G back in the village, which is not a big deal but it is 
when you’re trying to make payments by card, you know, in the shops. And we have a loose 
goal of if/when the power goes out again we have enough for a month, but as 
I say that’s an “ish” goal. Yeah, unfortunately, the way the world is… Storm Éowyn, there are going to be more of them aren’t there? Yeah, I mean it was it was unusual, but it was a 
heck of a sobering thing, especially as I had to leave the country and go to was it Vienna? Yeah. 
And I didn’t know if the power was going to be on. If I was going to be leaving Annie, and the kids, 
and the lizard, and my Dad, yeah, in the dark. [Music] So. That thing there. I gave it a week 
before it dies, just on past record. [Music] So, that was our spring in Northern Ireland. 
County Tyrone. Yeah, and we’re planning to do roughly the same thing over summer… Just 
footage that we took as we were going along, and we’ll do the same for summer and post 
it again. And today is a momentous day, because we have our very first tomato. 
We’re going to make a big feast out of it. [Music]