Tuesday 17 Feb 2015

Another warm one doing pretty well nothing except a couple of running maintenance jobs on Bertie – there’s always something that’s looking for attention.

Our oasis of calm

The calm before the storm

Whilst I was catching up with the blog the wind suddenly got up quite seriously and despite being tied down, the awning was flapping and threatening to take off. Rushing outside we saw that what looked like a sandstorm was getting up as visibility had suddenly dropped to almost nothing. Enlisting help from Colin, and joined by Omar from the site staff, we managed to get it in in time, although I managed to break the handle again, dent the side of the van with the grips and lose one of the tension springs.

Deciding that we’d better batten down the hatches and get everything inside, on taking down the rotary dryer I discovered I had managed to drive one of the tie-down pegs straight through a water pipe resulting in our own little fountain! Abdul came round with an old inner tube, a piece of which he tied round the pipe after digging it out and I gave him some tie-wraps to fix it – Moroccan style! There was still a little dribble but he said he’d fix it tomorrow.

With the wind showing no signs of abating we cancelled our plan to walk into the village for our evening meal and instead started planning our next move tomorrow and thereafter. Bren not too happy with the van being rocked around in the gale, which didn’t abate until well into the night.