Top corridor, Mountain House and Lake House

 What a crazy busy couple of days; I was always planning on doing this update late, on Saturday, but it has been pushed back to Sunday afternoon by circumstance and opportunity, powered by exhaustion.

Washing the library floor

Heavy unit moved into the guest room

Bekir seals the corridor

All three men scraping the walls

Very dusty Sally

So now to cast my mind back to Friday. It was a busy one for me but I got to take a few pictures as the men worked to clean the floor in the library; this room will now be left for at least a week before they go back to paint it. It took them all morning to scrub and wash the floor but now it is ready for painting. With that completed they went up to the top corridor. First of all Bekir and Halil shifted the heavy units out of the way into their store positions while Sally got started on scraping and cleaning the walls. We have asked Bekir to seal the corridor with plastic sheeting to keep the worst of the dust out of the stairs and Room 13 so he spent a bit of time before and after lunch rigging this up which is working well, though it's still crazily dusty. The rest of the day was all scraping and chipping plaster; they made loads of progress and then cleaned up before they left. It was a good day.

Lamb Kavarma and chips

Dusk from my camp location

Little bivvy pitched up

The red moon rising

Pre dawn

Still lying in my bivvy

Wrapped up against the wind chill

I was heading up to the Mountain House to bivvy over night, just to get up there again having not been much this year, and on the way I had dinner with Dincher which was lovely. I got up there just as it got dark and saw the neighbour, who confirmed the cows have been moved, and got myself pitched up in no time. I chilled out quite a while before getting into bed but I didn't sleep all that well due to having no pillow; shoes aren't very comfy to lay on. I woke through the night and watched the stars, so a shooting star and a few satellites, and just enjoyed myself; I watched the moon rise red over the hills and it was magical. In the morning I woke before the sun and sat, wrapped in my sleeping bag as there was quite a windchill, drinking tea from my thermos and looking at the views.

I shot a video of the sun rising that is 8 minutes long. Above is the video in its long length with the sounds of the morning.

And above HERE is the sped up to music video.

Neighbour's donkey saying hello

The sun FINALLY breaks above the clouds

With the sun finally starting to show I packed up the campsite, said hello to my neighbour's donkey, and headed back home in time for washing up and breakfast.

Lake house frontage

View from the balcony

Back to camping (more mosquitoes this time)

That afternoon we had arranged to view another property we are thinking of purchasing and so we all piled into Thomas and headed up the road to it. It is an old School boarding house, where kids from far flung villages could stay to go to the central school during communist times, and is right on the edge of a beautiful lake; we have looked at places on the other side previously. It was stunning and we were very interested indeed so that evening, unexpectedly, I made the decision to take the bivvy back out and check out the noise from the mosque that was JUST behind the building. This was a good call as the volume of the call to prayer was very high indeed. We have some thinking to do however and I did meet the owner today.

So there you are; a long update over the weekend as lots has happened. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.