About Me

Hello, I live in Colby in the Isle of Man on Scholaby Farm.

Scholaby Farm

I am married to Sue and have two children . Andrew 20 and Beverley 19.

Sue, Bev & Andrew.

I love the country and like to spend lots of time with the dogs walking on the Sloc hills.

The Sloc.
We are lucky enough to live on a farm high in the hills overlooking the sea and surrounding countryside.

I have my own little garage business ( Drill Hall Garage) where I repair and service cars and machinery.

Drill Hall Garage.
Having worked for the main Ford dealer and JCB dealer for 17 years I decided to resign my position as service manager and branch out on my own. I started my business Mobile Mechanical Services in 1984 and have remained self employed ever since . I have also taught motor technology and engineering to students ( foreign and local) at King Williams College here.

I enjoy involvement in motorsport and motor cycle sport too.

Rally car.
I usually help with the national and international car rallies here by being a doctors driver. This involves me and a doctor being stationed at the start of a special stage and if an incident occurs where injuries are possible we race to the scene on closed roads to attend the incident and if necessary summon the ambulance. For this year's Sony Manx rally I marshalled with my friend Mint from Chiang Mai as she was visiting us here at the time. She was quite surprised to be made a special constable on the Isle of Man Constabulary for the event, but hopefully enjoyed the event and the overall atmosphere of rallying on the IOM.

Now about our dogs .

Rhea.
Rhea is a female Gordon Setter. She is crazy ( like all setters) and is 11 years old. Charlie is a mongrel/terrier boy and is 14 years old. He is nice but is likely to pee on people's feet as a form of greeting :(( Charlie thinks this is clever :))

Charlie.

We moved here in 1995 from our little cottage down the road in Colby.

Most of the fields here are sown with barley.

Barley field.
Others are grass for sileage . Very little hay is made here now . This is due to the un- predictable weather and the feeding trends where sileage is more practical and beneficial than hay. I would think it would be worth continuing making some hay as I am sure there would be a market for it with all the horse and pony owners over here. So that is briefly the way this farm runs. It is just an extension of Belle Abbey's (my inlaws family) business.

The following is information about the area we live in and what went on in the past .

Lead mining was carried out at Scholaby Mines but they became un-economical as the silver content in the ore was too high. So the mines were closed down and lead was imported from Australia instead. Remains of the mines still exist.

Scholaby Mine

The most interesting part of Scholaby is a Bronze age site in a field behind our house. We moved here in 1995 and met a visitor walking near the house one day who remembers his uncle working in the lead mines adjacent to us.

He visited his uncle here last in 1932 and told me of certain characters who lived in the area. Some time after he left, I received a letter thanking me for the help I gave him in pointing out old remains of properties and likely sites where his uncle worked. He told me that he had spoken to an archaeologist that knew our upper field quite well.

The mound in the field was made (nobody knows why) some time during the Bronze age. Underneath there are four large boulders and flint tools have been found around it. The site was known as the "cooking place" . As the Bronze Age people did not have cooking pots they found it very difficult to boil water. To overcome this problem they dug pits, lined with clay and dug channels from them to a water supply. When the water in the pits reached a required depth they blocked the channels and rolled hot stones from the fires around the tops of the pits into the water.

The upper field is known as the Church Field, but nobody knows the reason for this name. However, most people know that removing stones from this land brings bad luck.

Please write to me if you require any information about this island or the sporting events taking place here. If you would like a 2002 Isle of Man brochure please send me your full postal address. I can arrange to have one delivered as soon as they are available courtesy of our friendly tourism department.

You can contact me at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.