Farnes Life

Stocked up on Monday for another storm

However getting it to the buildings has its difficulties..

No electricity so still got gas lights!

Even drinking water is carried on



No running water, so water boiled to get hot water...

....to enable us to do dishes...

and plenty of the 'vital' supplies in.

Wednesday 12th November comments: ‘It’s life Jim but not as we know it'.

The Farne Islands; its amazing place for wildlife and an amazing place to visit but what’s it like to live out here? For nine months of the year a small team of rangers live, breath and bleed the Farne Islands and we are now entering our final few weeks of this year’s campaign.

Life on the Farnes can be amazing but challenging, as our working days and daily life is dictated by one major factor; the weather. At this time of year storms and heavy seas are more frequent and being cut off for several days at a time becomes the ‘norm’.

This week alone we’ve been stuck since Monday and that came off the back of a six day storm which marooned us last week. So a lot of planning has to go into island life (especially at this time of year) as with no running water on the islands we have to stock up supplies.

It’s not just water as we need plenty of bottled gas for providing cooking and lights (remember gas lights!?). Add food supplies, fuel for our boats and general work kit and equipment, it takes a lot of organising to ensure everything is sorted and in place for each storm.

As for the team, we’re very use to these storms and life goes on during these storms, as we’ve got work to do and Seal pups to count! After all, this is Planet Farnes and if Carlsberg made islands….