Mr Finley.

It’s taken months but at last I have managed to get back to Loubar to see how things ended up in my absence in October. It felt strangely distant and far from the warm, buzzing focus of my time, that it had been only a few months before. How strange, though of course it was now the middle of winter, extremely cold, grey and wet, the trees void of leaves, skeletal branches twisting naked to slate coloured sky, and seasonally, far from the warmth of the summer.

The cold and grey of winter in Loubar.

I frequently speak of Loubar with genuine love and having brought up a friend to see what I was talking about, it must have seemed difficult to understand why I am so enthusiastic. When I talk to my neighbours about what they do in winter, they say, sleep. Stay inside and hide away from the cold and wet, working only when necessary, which is to say ploughing and planting and then squirreling oneself away, a type of human hibernation, till spring begins to offer both warmth and colour to the land.

Friends come to Loubar and wonder what the fuss is about

You have to spend time on the land to really understand it. Last spring and summer was the first time that I had “lived” in Loubar and it made a great impression on me. But even in my designs for the house, I’ve realized that much is “summer based” and the challenges of winter, wet and cold, are majoritively absent. At the very least I will need to ensure that each room has a wood burning stove to support the 40cm rock wall insulation.

I spent the night in Xaouen and even there it was cold enough to take your breath away…and I am talking about inside my hotel room. God knows what it must be like up on Loubar, in those new, red brick houses. I popped in to see Abderkarim whilst up in Loubar and he told me…”barid, barid buzeeeeefffff”.

Note to self….Wood burning stoves in every room!

Progress made in October….materials and a well.

Back in October I’d paid to extend a seasonal piste up to the land so as to be able to get materials on it to begin the build next May. Not having been up since then I had no real idea of what we had finally managed to do.

Infact the last I heard was that the truck driver had been in dispute with the costs involved and nothing was happening…it risked paying for the piste, but failing to use it because no one would make a financial decision in my absence.

But I was happy to see that infact we had much of what I had wanted; sand, gravel, lime, rocks and bricks were all in place, tho I fear we might need more rock given the size of the footprint of the top house. But added to that was a new well, which Mohammed Mwalem told me drew water at 4 m, in October…brilliant. At the time of my visit the water level was more or less at ground level…great news for me.

On a slightly annoying note, it seems that Ghalli has decided to plough the land to plant wheat and fuul beans. I appreciate that I have left the donkeys with him, but usually he will use them to work, he should have asked and it’s a classic case of not being present. It’ll mean that the land is all churned up when I had wanted it to be nice and flat, covered with grass. Nothing to do about it now, apart from bringing in 50% of the harvest, including the oil…silver linings and clouds and all that.

But next year, Ish Allah, I’ll be on the land, we’ll have the houses up, electricity and water on and we’ll be fully functioning…..tho that still requires quite a lot of planning before spring.

A summer of Love turned winter of discontent.

I saw this cut in to a tree whilst I was up at the farm and had to include it here. It’s been a funny old year. What a difference to this time last year. And yet this year has also been filled with new adventures and learning, tremendous joy and sadness.

It’s life lived live and whilst at the time of writing, is tinged with sadness, I am happy to have felt such overwhelming emotions, to have ventured out of the shadows and in to the light, even if right now, appropriately, I write in winter. Saying that, it’s a lot milder than that I felt last year.

And thus I have to say, thank you (you know who you are) and good luck to us both in the future.

Paragliding in Agadir…Getting your wings in the air is all about practice and confidence!

In part as a consequence of this, but also because I’d been promising myself for years, to get out my paraglider, which had been sat in storage since our arrival in Fez, most of Finns life ago, I booked myself on to a paragliding course south of Agadir for the beginning of January.

There’s a lot of false starts before you can find your self soaring in clear blue skies.

Of course whilst everyone always thinks of paragliding as being filled with incredible, exciting and dangerous hours of adrenaline filled action, the reality is quite different…lots of time waiting for prevailing winds and, in our case, terrible weather to pass.

Hopefully this is part of the future.

Having said that, when it works, it’s amazing and I would hope that I can now advance and grow in to the sport. I’ve found that there is a club in Rabat and hopefully a few fellow fliers around Fez. The spring and summer may also be an opportunity to pop over to Spain and try a bit of flying there, very much with the intention of opening up paragliding around Xaouen and adding this as a target market for both the farm and Dar Finn….why not?

And this is also dedicated to all my friends, but to two in particular; The Junkie and Capt Sensible ….. Nice to have met you again.