15.11.23

Today I began my journey to Bulgaria. Sue dropped me off with my case and rucksack at Harborough station and then carried on to the cinema in Corby to watch a film and then do some shopping. The 10.30 a.m. train to Leicester was a couple of minutes late and its connection to Sheffield was fifteen minutes late. The connection to Manchester Picadilly was due to have left ten minutes before mine arrived so I was very pleased to discover that it too was delayed. Overdue by half an hour, as I took my seat it was announced that they would only be stopping at four of a very long list of stations that it should, no doubt it would save time but at the expense of some of its customers who had to disembark at one of the stations up the line and catch the next train. Thankfully, Picadilly was the end of the line. It took some time to find the right platform and just missed the train to the airport, luckily it was only another 15 minutes for the next one.

While waiting I took a call from my step-brother David, his train from Cumbria had been cancelled, and the next two as well. What on earth has happened to the rail system in this country?

It took a fifteen-minute walk from the airport station to find the Ibis hotel and I was soon in the room munching the Meal Deal I had purchased on my way through the Terminal. I waited for David to arrive by watching TV. He arrived around 8.30 p.m. and we spent until midnight chatting, catching up on family news, and discussing what may need to be done in Ritya.

16.11.23

We woke at 4.30 a.m. and made the short walk to Terminal One where we passed through security and passport control without a hitch and were soon having a light breakfast in one of the lounge cafeterias.  As we finished it was time to purchase a ‘Meal  Deal’ from one of the outlets and then proceed to the departure gate, where I joined the Speedy Boarding as I had paid extra for a cabin bag, and David tagged onto the end of the ‘without baggage’ line.

We had seats at the rear of the aircraft and as the flight wasn’t full we each had a bank of three to lay down on and have a sleep, as a consequence the 2 hour 45 minute flight flew by. Bulgarian immigration took some time to navigate as did collecting our Citroen C3 hire car, but it went smoothly, if not slowly.

The drive to Ritya included three stops, the first one being to figure out why a warning light had appeared on the dashboard. It wasn’t until we changed the language from Bulgarian to English on the car computer that we figured out that we had to reset the tyre pressure gauge to cancel it. The second stop was for a break for coffee and a cheesy snack. Our final stop was in Sevlievo to buy a data SIM card for a little gizmo that David had brought so that we would have the internet in the house and a visit to Lidl to stock up with provisions for the next few days.

It was dark when we eventually arrived in Ritya. Peering through the gloom we could see that the garden had returned to the wild, but were very surprised that the house was warm and didn’t feel damp. There were plenty of dead insects of all varieties throughout the rooms and many little piles of sawdust on the floor from woodworms that had exited from little holes in the overhead beams. On checking the well we discovered two dead rats were floating on the surface, giving off a very unpleasant smell.

With a fire made we set about cleaning up the sawdust and insects and then made a meal of moussaka and chips. We watched a film on Netflix before retiring to bed at midnight. I slept in a bedroom next to the lounge fire and David chose the large sofa in the lounge as we didn’t have time to make up his bed.

17.11.23

This turned out to be an eventful day. After an early breakfast, we set about removing the two dead rats from the well. Without this water we couldn’t use the taps or flush toilets as the pumps couldn’t be turned on without them being removed, the filters wouldn’t cope, and all other jobs would have to wait.

The water level was around 10 metres with the bottom considerably deeper. At first, we attached a bucket with holes in the base (so it would sink) to a rope and tried lowering it into the water and raising it to the surface under a rat, thus catching it inside. The well became slightly wider as it descended which meant that as the bodies were next to the side we couldn’t get the bucket to rise under them! The solution was to use a long piece of wood and push the rope to the side of the well as it descended and though this worked, as we raised the bucket the water didn’t flow out of it quick enough and the flow pushed the rat aside. Plan B was to fashion a bucket out of wire mesh and sink that below the rats, hoping that there would be no outflow of water to push the rats away. Within 10 minutes of trying we had both drowned and decomposed rats in a sealed bucket on the patio. We next dropped chlorine tablets and powder into the water to kill any bugs and then circulated the water by lowering a pump below its surface and leaving it to run while we made a salad for lunch and ate it.

Stomachs full, David set about checking the system that took water from the borehole. It was as he was turning on the various pumps and filters to get this up and working that he got a shock and the power went off in the house. Relatively unharmed (but wary) he set about checking the various trip-out switches, but none had triggered. Mark, who lives across the lane came to help, but it soon became obvious that the power had tripped outside the property. David and I checked the sealed electricity box attached to a pole in the lane which carried the current to the house and suspected that it was here that the problem lay.

As we were searching for the external power cable we made a friend of a dog belonging to one of the villagers. By now it was late and dark. Deciding not to relocate to a hotel for the night we lit the wood burner, put candles around the lounge and placed a frozen pizza and a baking tin of frozen chips into the oven on the wood burner and drank beer and chatted until they were ready.

David sent a WhatsApp message to a Bulgarian friend Vlado, he had done much of the past electrical work in the house and asked for his help, he responded quickly indicating that he would call the following day.

Thankfully, our internet gizmo was battery-operated and we still had broadband so we watched England beat Malta 2:0 on a laptop to while away the hours until midnight.

18.11.23

We were both breakfasted and up and about by 8 a.m. We couldn’t do much without power so filled in the time until Vlado arrived. David drove to a local spring to collect water in several large barrels so that we could wash up and flush the toilets. I set about clearing the wilderness that had taken over and made a bonfire to burn the rubbish. I pulled a tree out of the swimming pool that had rooted from a large branch which had snapped off from a tree next to it during a storm, its roots had obviously taken enough nutrients from the very green pool water to thrive.

Vlado arrived around midday and within minutes the power was back on. We had been right, the power had tripped in the box on the pole.  Keen not to let Vlado go until he had thoroughly tested out the pumping systems, the two of them spent a couple of hours trying to coax the pumps and filters into life and after an hour we had water coming out of the taps.

While David and Vlado were working on the system checking that there were no leaks from the extensive piping that snakes around the house, Mark turned up closely followed by another neighbour, Milen. Both were keen to speak to Vlado, no doubt to enlist his help with some electrical problem they had.

When eventually everybody left the sun was beginning to set, so had something to eat, made a fire in the lounge and settled down for the night and chatted until 1 am.