Activities at Strachan House Care Home

We were treated to an amazing live virtual talk and a tour of Cliveden, hosted by the house and chapel guides from the National Trust Talks Service.

The volunteers kindly gave us a tour around the famous house taking an in-depth look at Cliveden’s many stories from its 350 year history, from devilish dukes to scandalous headlines and boundary-breaking garden designs to political notoriety.

Starting with the Duke of Buckingham who built the first house in 1666, our residents met the key owners who helped shape the house and its gardens including the Orkney, Sutherland and Astor families.

The talk was accompanied by an illustrated presentation which brought to life these individuals and showed how their influence at Cliveden still continues today.

We had a fabulous time joining NESCAFÉ’s virtual coffee experience.

We were able to look into how they sustainably farm their coffee beans, as well as, to have a virtual tour of one of their factories all from the comfort of our home.

To make things even more interesting, our residents had the chance to test their knowledge with an interactive quiz, and to the delight of all to taste the signature Sweet Cinnamon Shaken Iced Coffee cocktail.

Strachan House care home was filled with flowers, cards and sweets in celebration of St valentine’s day.

Staff and residents celebrated the day of love by making cards for their loved ones. We also created heart shaped decorations and decorated the home. In the afternoon we were entertained by Jack High with love songs through the decades and we finished off our lovely afternoon with a theme of cupcakes, chocolate and cocktails which certainly went down a treat. Our residents also enjoyed seeing their loved ones.

We all know the health benefits of keeping active, but this can be especially difficult in the winter when cold weather and dark days can make it much harder to get moving.  To incentivise residents to go the extra mile during the winter months, the physio and activities teams at local Edinburgh care home, Strachan House, came together and set the residents a virtual walking challenge which they called ‘Step It Up Strachan.’ 

The challenge was a virtual 13 mile or 126,000 step walking route around Edinburgh taking in some of the cities best known sites, including Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, Arthur’s seat, The Meadows and Stockbridge.

And step it up they did!  In just under three weeks, the residents managed to collectively walk a staggering 60 miles. Several residents also took on the route as an individual challenge and the motivation and dedication shown was just fantastic to see. Corridor walks and trips around the garden saw the residents clocking up the miles on their step monitors. The individual winner, Lily Taylor, walked an amazing total of 37,660 steps!

We had a lovely time joining Chef Alex Connell from Vegetarian for Life for a Valentine’s-inspired virtual cookery demonstration.  Chef Alex created some delicious Valentine’s Day-inspired vegetarian desserts, which our residents had the opportunity to try too.

First, our residents sampled a wonderful sticky toffee pudding, which was absolutely heavenly. Then they tried hazelnut truffles which were a huge hit and finally they were treated to a chocolate orange cake which everyone adored.

Staff and residents at Barchester’s Strachan house care home in Edinburgh got out their binoculars and bird books to support this year’s Big Garden Birdwatch initiative.

The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch is an annual event to try to understand what is happening to our native birds. The idea is to log all the birds you see in your garden, from your window or in your local park in a one hour period any time between January 28th and 30th.  Last year over 1 million people took part and between them they counted 17 million birds.  Sadly we have lost over 38 million birds from the UK skies in the last 50 years so it is vital we do all we can to protect our birdlife.

Residents had a brilliant time filling up birdfeeders, making fat balls to attract the birds before they got started and then looking up the different species in their bird books to make sure they were logging them correctly. They saw lots of different types of birds and we even had our Squirrels coming for lunch.