A Day Off

As we had not moved very far from the house since we got here, we thought it was about time to explore this beautiful country, so while Paul cracked on with our new roof, his wife (Jan) and our mutual friend Chris took Dan and I to Emen Gorge.     Literally 5 mins in a car up the road is an Eco-trail, we parked up next to the reservoir and walked into the woods. It was a fabulous day weather-wise and we enjoyed the shade of the trees as we ascended towards the waterfall. With all the rain we have had lately it was gushing with force over the ridge, churning up the water below and deafening its visitors, but it was still great for Kia to cool off in despite being a little too rough for swimming on this occasion...a great excuse to come back again another time!   More climbing and crossing of little wooden bridges, fabulous views across and down into the gorge,...
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Oh BeeHave!

  This has probably bee...n one of the hardest weeks of my life, I was seriously considering going back to work for a rest!! Firstly the Friday night 'thank you' to Paul & Jan went a little out of the window as we all got invited to a Russian celebration in the village and collectively gave it the big thumbs up and promptly spent the evening in some lovely company, eating some fabulous food cooked up by Helena and drinking vast quantities of high quality vodka provided by Tim. Not so hard you may think, but the next day things started to go down hill a little, not only was I nursing a very slight hangover but on one of my normal trips to the spring to collect water (no we haven't sorted that out yet) I got attacked by two bees...one got caught in my hair the other in my jacket - and due to me inadvertently killing one of them, they...
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Too much excitement for one week

Well there's no doubting that when things happen here they certainly happen. Firstly we engage an electrician to rewire the house and having looked at what we wanted arranged to come back a couple of days later to start the work...brilliant, only trouble was one room was completely clad from floor to ceiling in pine including all the beams...to wire that room would be a nightmare so we got stuck in to remove it all, finding hundreds and hundreds of empty walnut shells behind all the wood - left by the previously resident mice! On the plus side we now have plenty of wood to fuel our new and improved cooker... The room was 99% cleared when they arrived and cracked on with the work - three days later it was all complete - all we need now is some power from the street to the house and we'll be rocking. Whilst the guys were on site doing the electrics we got on with...
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Despite Everything….

A very good friend of mine was talking of running a book on where we would break down on our way to Bulgaria...he really should have got it up and running as the choices were pretty much endless. We left Derby at 9.30am on 7th April and by 10.30am near Kettering we were stationery in the inside lane of the M1 with no ignition in a 5 tonne automatic beast of a motorhome and it was 2.30pm before we were rescued thanks to the speedy responses of the AA. Despite some severe reservations about how far we would make it once the camper was repaired we finally made it onto the ferry at Dover at 2am on the 8th April, which works out at about 18 miles an hour...it was going to be a long drive!! It was Belgium before we had to get the tool kit out again and tighten up the alternator belt...then pulling in for the night in Germany...
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Fond Farewells

This is my final week in the UK and this has been an emotional roller coaster. First giving up my corporate job that I have been in for nearly seven years, I'm probably not going to miss the early morning starts or the pressure to deliver, but I will certainly miss my colleagues, some of which have become life-long friends and many of which will just look on curiously to watch what we do...or at least I hope they do! Then of course there's my family and my friends and as I grew up in the Lake District we set off up North firstly stopping off at Fran's, who lives in a beautiful spot on the estuary with a backdrop of the fells. We worked out that we have been friends for 45 years, which made us both feel so youthful (not) and spent a lovely couple of hours (not long enough) catching up, reminiscing and looking to the future before...
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Its a Mini Adventure

You plan and plan and it all seems very...well...under control! You know what you're doing, when you're doing it, you have it organised down to the last detail - especially when, like me, planning is what you do for a living. We were planning on buying a truck and doing two journey's from the UK to BG with various stuff (or crap as most people see it), then out of the blue we got a call "can you fill half my truck" this week so I don't make the journey half empty...well it would be rude not to in our position, so a radical re-plan was in order. So we packed like we'd never packed before, filled my mini with as many boxes as we could (all three of them) and stacked the rest around it in the garage in preparation for the truck's arrival, which of course was in the dark on the only day this winter that it has actually snowed.   Undeterred...
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Calm Down and Open the Parcel…

How excited can one woman get about a large package! :-) Well let me stop you right there...I had not one but THREE large packages arrive at my door last month containing no less than 50 flexible solar panels - close your eyes and imagine me doing a little victory dance in our garden (actually you may want to skip that image)! I had spent many months researching good old 'google' trying to understand solar technology and despite this, the only thing I'm pretty sure of is that I need a 5kw system to power our life so that is what I have bought...how I go about putting this all together, what inverter I need, how many batteries I need, which kind of charge controller I need is all going to be part of the growing pains. Or I could just ask Andy & Marie...or if there are any solar experts out there please don't hesitate to get in touch -...
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Why Bulgaria?

After everything that has happened you may be asking yourselves why the hell do we want to go back to the country that has vandalised our property and stolen from us.... well the answer is simple! There are good and bad wherever you go (the UK is no exception), but what we have found in Bulgaria is a kindness and a welcome from people that have very little but are content with their lot. Take our first house, when we arrived our garden was overgrown, we had no tools, we didn't speak the language... yet in walked Nidelka. This wonderful angel from next door, not only carrying tools but armed and ready to use them. Together we cleared the garden and had the cleanest outside loo that every existed and with a great view too.   This lady enlisted help from others in the village and soon we had a wonderful front garden, our grape vines were all tied up with ribbon ready for...
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Don’t let the B*stards grind you down!

As you know we ended up with four houses in Bulgaria  - this is a little about how that happened! Like our friends Andy & Marie who run The Good Life Bulgaria blog we bought our first house off ebay, basically because it was cheap and I fell in love with it (see pic above). We flew out to bulgaria for our first visit and when we saw it in real life we were even more smitten - right on the edge of the village and our neighbour 'Nidelka' and others in the village made us feel so welcome. There was plenty of work to do but our dream was taking shape! During our visit we heard of another house in the same village for next to nothing...it would have been rude not to and it would have given Dan somewhere to put his cars (we have lots of cars) - so we bought that too (see pic below) - not the...
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The Planning

The last five years have all been about planning - getting the right house, in the right location, for the right price, deciding what we'll need to: 1. Renovate the house 2. Survive without income for a period of time 3. Integrate into the village life 4. Create an income for when we do need it And of course building a pot of gold to take to the end of our rainbow - easier said than done sometimes! I've read lots of forums and blogs and facebook posts about if you are a capitalist and work in the city then the only way you think is "how much things cost", well this may be true to an extent but there is a limit to what you can do these day without a little bit of paper in your pocket. We intend to do most things ourselves so we have been reading up on "how to rewire a house", "installing solar power", "building a natural pool", plumbing, building,...
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