This week has been entirely taken up with our annual village fundraising event – the Yarcombe Terrier Races. This has turned into a village tradition, with this year being the 47th year. The event was set up by someone in the village to raise much-needed money for the church – part goes towards funding critical maintenance costs and part goes towards supporting the village and helping to bring the community together.
We usually see anywhere between 700-850 paying adults at the event (children get free entry so it’s harder to count them), and we have c.90 volunteers, so it takes a fair amount of organising. However much we try, things always get left till the last week, and it gets pretty hectic! This year the weather forecast was particularly problematic – especially on Friday when the Met Office decided to upgrade high winds to the first named storm of the season. The location is fairly sheltered (depending on the wind direction) and it was quite demoralising setting the site up and making final arrangements throughout the week, knowing that we wouldn’t make a final decision on the event going ahead until the morning itself – it takes so much effort from a lot of people. But as the weather looked like it was taking a turn for the better and the forecast was easing slightly, we decided to go ahead.
It wasn’t an easy decision but I’m really glad we took it. The event went really well overall, with good footfall (given the morning rain and afternoon winds) and people looked like they were enjoying themselves. We had 9 races of 8 dogs each, with some fast dogs and clear winners, and one stewards enquiry with a video finish, which made the event a bit more exciting. We were incredibly lucky that it didn’t rain in the afternoon as our bar tent had to be taken down after the wind proved too much, and sadly some of our craft stalls had to pack up to avoid losing their gazebos and products. Definitely stressful but worthwhile! Crazy though the difference a day makes – today it’s beautifully sunny and pretty calm – what a shame the storm hadn’t been a day earlier!
Our builders have been getting on well back at the house. The top floor roof has been insulated and is waiting for the next stage – although it turns out the floor is a little too thin and ‘bounces’ which will cause a problem if we tile the new shower room as the tiles will move and the grouting will crack and let water through. We’ve got a few options to consider, most of which are expensive and very disruptive, and could require planning permission. With everything going on this week we’ve not had time to talk them through or explore them fully, so we’ve added it to our list of things to do next week.
They’ve also finished building the roof structure of the extension in the shippon, which is starting to make the room space (our future lounge/dining room/kitchen) feel more complete. We’re facing the external walls with stone so it looks similar to how it was before – our stonemason has been hard at work here and managed to get most of the way up the side wall and halfway up the back wall, so it’s coming together nicely. Also in the shippon our builders have been building up the party wall between our home and the one-bed cottage, so you can no longer step through the entire shed. Soon you won’t even be able to see from one end to the other!
With the garage/communal area, the first floor floor is now completely on and glued down, ready for the first floor walls to go up. It suddenly feels more like a building than it has to date, possibly because you can actually see rooms downstairs.
The big difference this week is having had the scaffolding removed from the front of the house (and also from the back of the main barn but we don’t see that as much). The house is already much lighter and it feels less oppressive when you walk in and don’t have to walk under scaffolding boards. We’d moved all the pots and tomato plants that we’d been growing in front of the house so the scaffolders had better access – as we haven’t had time to move them back yet, it feels like a very big space suddenly!
We’re still waiting for the council to sign off some of our planning conditions for materials we want to use in the build – it’s now been two months since John got in contact with them (although some of the information our architect gave them back in April!). I’m sure they’re incredibly busy with the amount of building work going on at the moment but it’s so disappointing they set these conditions and then don’t give us the time to sign them off.
We do have a number of decisions outstanding for our build, which our architect has been chasing us about. With most of the terrier races activity out of the way (save sorting and packing a few boxes for next year), and no work trips until next week, we should have time to go through each one soon…
Ley Farm Cottages 