Un-planned trip back to the UK

Well.......It is now over 2 months since I wrote anything on here, I have been very very busy!

So...what happened in the 2 months away from the blog....

I have learned a lot.....

How to harvest the walnuts , using the worlds most impossibly straight and long sticks of wood.....how you get such a straight , thin, strong branch of wood? I have no idea!
How to preserve things in jars
Rakia.....(not that I have made any) , but I now know how!

How to get onto the ridge of the roof and stand there without falling off....

A lot of work has been done on the house, new roof, new floor in kitchen, plastered all the kitchen, new electric wires in walls for the 12v system, all the solar wires tidied up and safe!

In September I decided the time had come to continue with my roof.....I didn't get far! , I slipped and fell off the ladder and with my already broken ribs....they became.....`kind of  more broken!` , I could move the third rib at the front on my left hand side up and down, it was very unusual to look at, and very painful to do anything!

The next day I heard a knock on the gate, a man who I sort of know as a local who does building work wondered if I needed a hand doing it......after some discussion I got a price....a rough one anyway!

It took 10 days of work.... many trips to Dubrovo for materials, Kazanlak for metal bits , Zimnitsa, Maglizh, Kazanlak, StaraZagora, Gurkovo etc to pick up what seemed like more and more workers for different bits here and there and the roof was eventually finished, not just the barn roof but the whole roof on all barns and house, garden tidied, loads of rubbish from the barn moved....around 5 cart loads at least from in the barn alone!

Horse and cart in garden

Filling another cart with weeds this time

Some of the wood removed

I kept all the wood, old tiles etc , even the mud from under the tiles is retained for repairs and construction in the future

It had been raining lightly all the time...most of the time anyway!.....all year!, far less than it was before I decided to get it fixed earlier in the year! , just after completion it was bucketing down with rain......

I found myself at 2am, in the loft checking.....sitting there as the rain bounced outside......
Waiting for drips.....Waiting and waiting for drips.....It was fine!

Front part painted with new gutters

Back of house and large barn

Front of house from on my.... old mini market roof.....

Small barn

Up on the top it mainly needs the fascia boards painting now, and the chimneys rendering.


The end of September I had a few problems that meant I needed to go to the UK

28th of September I decided to tax the van......on line......as it was running out, It was not working, I needed to do it quickly as it was parked in the UK outside the house so it needed to be taxed. I could not tax it , it wouldn't work due to the new on line tax system not working.

29th of September at 5am I checked the emails and found one saying that our UK factory had been broken into and I was needed as I was the only person who would know what should be there.

So the van tax and the break in I needed to change what I was doing, instead of just driving back for a few days here and there near the end of October, I needed to go early and stay a bit longer

Quick on line flight booking for the next day..... £600 to return by easy jet! to the UK leaving the next morning

I had to leave in about 3 hours later , bus to Kazanlak then to Sofia then stay overnight to get the morning flight to Manchester
I tidied up rapidly ( I hope I moved enough food, I wonder if the open milk is still there???.....) , all the citrus trees are in the house as the greenhouse isn't finished ( so for now they are in a bedroom upstairs! ), locked the doors, had a word with a few people in the road outside and I was off , no time to finish what I need to do.

One of the citrus trees is still outside as it is so heavy....I hope it didn't snow on it too much last week!

After around a month back in the UK , 5 UK and 1 German trade shows to fill in the time!,  I am going back in to Bulgaria in a couple of weeks, last exhibition for this year is a wood turning and power tool exhibition at Harrogate this weekend.