First week of house building

Amid trepidation about the falling value of the pound, yet again(!), we started the house building this week.

You will find photographs with captions here:-

http://picasaweb.google.com/JPD.Britt/Housebuilding#

Everything began well with Fr Rico blessing the site, then we got a substandard delivery of hollow blocks (breeze blocks) You can see from the photos that I could (and did) crumble one with my own fair hands. Not what you want to use to build a house!

There has been much digging and pouring in of cement and all seemed to be going well until this afternoon. Now the actual site has a slope on it and I, foolishly, thought we might get a JCB and level the ground first. Apparently not. The work on the foundations has proceeded on the uneven ground with the result that the floor level at one end of the house, which is a foot or so above ground level, is 4 metres above ground level at the other! No the engineer and the architect didn't spot this problem either.

So now we are going to have an undercroft at one end of the house and my office is going to be high in the sky! I can't see any feasible alternative, so that is how it will be.
Actually the undercroft will provide another terrace facing a different direction from the main one and might also be useful as a small photo studio, who knows?

Nothing like a Sunday afternoon stroll

Last Sunday, Valentine's day, Grace decided we would go for a walk. When I say we, there were 13 people involved. Because the walk actually started at the Japenese Garden, the Pajero was crammed full of people for the short drive down there.

We were aiming for a waterfall. It all started well, we went through Japenese Garden, branched off and were walking in fields in a general downwards direction. Japenese Garden is at the top of our mountain so i guess any direction is down. We had a bit of a scramble down a narrow path and after 20 minutes came to a pleasant river.

From Waterfall

We then set off up and down very narrow and muddy paths for a further 45 minutes and finally decided we were lost. Because , on average, there had been more down than up, on the way back to the river there was more up than down, so I was quite tired when we got back there. However we met a lady who told us where we should have gone and so off we set once more. Again we had narrow and muddy tracks, I had the wrong footwear for this, and more down than up until finally we found the waterfall.

From Waterfall

It was definitely worth the effort! Various members of our party swam across and besported themselves in the waterfall, including Annabell and Michelle.

From Waterfall

From Waterfall

More pictures can be seen at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/JPD.Britt/Waterfall#

The walk back was a lot of up and not much down and by the time we were getting near to the Jaopenese garden I was puffing like an old grampus, which I probably am anyway!.

Given that we started about 11 and finally got home about 4.30/ 5.00 it was quite an expedition. Oh yes, I got attacked by leeches as well, I think when I was sitting taking the photographs. So there was quite a bit of blood.

Still not everyone can do a jungle trek on Valentine's Day!!