March 2013

Hole in the ground
We’ve had a bit of a disaster. Just before Christmas after five days of incessant heavy rain the stream in our garden burst its banks, water crashed across the swimming pool and began to gouge into the unstable land beyond, which we’d had planted with mango and other trees(partly to stabilise it, but they hadn’t been there long enough to achieve that). The result was an absolutely massive landslip which deposited our mango orchard squarely on our neighbours’ paddy fields, and also affected the chicken farm adjacent to us.

Scary or what? The good news is, first and foremost, that no-one was injured – it happened at night – and, second, that the pool itself was undamaged, though the pipework and electricity supply were fractured and the pump-house was unceremoniously dumped into the bottom of the canyon. Third, because all this happened in the lower gardens, the house and the gardens surrounding it were unaffected.

We have been out, in February and early March, to assess the damage and organise a contractor to reinstate the land as well as getting the pool back up and running from the summer. It’s going to cost us almost £25K to fix, which is the money we’d put by to buy a vehicle, meet our shipping and removal costs and undertake some other improvements prior to moving to Sri Lanka later this year.

So we now have to stay another two years in the UK to earn enough to recoup all that loss. Talk about throwing money into a hole in the ground! Being positive, we will in the end have an intriguing valley garden and an accidental infinity pool.

Road update
When we returned to England a couple of weeks ago there had still been no progress on repairing the road, but we’re delighted to announce that in the last week the work has finally re-started. We’re not holding our breath as to how long it will take to complete the work up to Uduwela village (from where it’s passable by car anyway) or indeed whether it will all grind to a halt again at some point, but for now we’re feeling quietly optimistic. Having a decent road will transform our business as (a) guests who have hired a car will be able to get to the house (b) the journey time into Kandy city will be halved, making JT a more attractive place to stay for those who not only want the peace of the mountains but also want to spend time exploring our wonderful local city.

Like us on Facebook
Thanks to lots of help from our lovely daughter-in-law Lindsey Jungle Tide now has a Facebook page. Take a look: just enter Jungle Tide into the search option on Facebook and give us a “like”. Thanks!

And finally… a mongoose that Sally enticed with an egg.