It’s strange to tell but, after all my bragging about the ‘sea defences’ (around the portacabin and caravan) not being tested in earnest, it actually rained last night just after we got to bed. It came down really heavy but only lasted for perhaps half an hour. Elayne said that she thought that she heard thunder in the distance.
It was strange how we became aware of it starting. When I turned the ‘genny’ (yes, in my now world famous night attire, thank you Malcolm) off I thought that I saw rain reflected in my headlight, it was so light that it seemed like snow, so I stood a while and held my hand out to see if I could feel it. Anyway I couldn’t, but just as we were finishing reading we heard what I thought was one of the cats clawing the carpet in the lounge, or it could have been something scratching around outside. After a while Elayne said that it sounded like rain dropping onto a bucket. As this was a far better explanation than mine (and bearing in mind that I’m ‘mutt and Jeff’ anyway) I drifted off to sleep to be woken almost immediately by the sound of really heavy pounding on the roof, what a racket. Because of the ‘sea defences’ I was not over concerned by the rain this time and after a short time we both drifted off to sleep.
On investigation this morning the defences had worked extremely well and although some small amount of water had gone under the caravan, most of it went either round each side of the van or amassed in a puddle behind the defences and in the car park. Ironically I then spent the rest of the morning taking down these barriers in readiness for the move to the lay-by tomorrow.
We both got stuck into pulling everything down inside the portacabin and putting it on the floor so that nothing can fall down when the cabin is moved . Whether Juan can actually still tow both the caravan and the portacabin with all of our stuff in, is entirely another matter. It’s very strange but both of us had felt that there was a enormous amount of work to be done in readiness for this move, but in actual fact after we had each spent about two hours sorting things out we were finished as far as we can go until first light tomorrow. Juan said that he would be up here around ten o’clock, but I think that we should read that as sometime before two, perhaps, maybe. So we are all set, with gritted teeth, to end our two and a half months occupation of this plot and this phase of our project. I’m not sure that I will get chance to write the blog tomorrow but normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
This afternoon we have had glorious sunshine and we have walked down to see how the olives are getting on. They are ready right now for harvesting, so as soon as we are settled, across the way, we must go and buy some netting to lay under the trees and then start combing the branches to make the olives fall onto the netting. It will be interesting to see how many we manage to get. Watch this space.