Whilst we made so much progress last year, there seems to be so much to do again this year. I’ve been thinking of new designs for the house and the possibility of adding more rooms, or at least offering the potential for more when I’ve either the time or the money.
Glamping may not be everyone’s cup of tea..so what do we do about that?
This moves so much further from the original plan of simple glamping. But as I’ve discovered myself, whilst glamping is wonderful, it won’t be everyones cup of tea and it can be pretty hot in summer.
Then there’s the need to ensure that there’s as much of a year round option as possible, the need to add value to the land, just in case I sell and finally, the reality that I would rather not have to re start building again any time soon.
I think we need a bigger house…which means more Time and Money.
Thus building plans have been changed and may now include 5 top house bedrooms (+ one en suite in mission control), and a set of internal stairs coming from inside the house, just incase I add two further rooms above.
I’ve also seen a house on the way to the national park that seems an interesting proto type, but all will need more time and money….arghhhhh…and both are in short supply.
Something like this might look nice!
As I mentioned earlier, one of the first things to do is to level the land for the new foundations. We’re doing this by digging out behind the house and by Fuddle’s place. It’ll mean that the house has a walled back yard with corridor leading on to the land ad a set of stairs from the public path. This again will need several days of mason work and lots of reinforced cement…I feel the budget constricting as I type.
But it makes the whole project better.
How to break a rock the size of a family car..brains not brawn is what they say here.
The other major issue is how to get rid of the rock that’s fallen on to the land…it being the size of a small bedroom.
We spent several days banging away at it with picks, hammers and pointed metal poles. As they say here, you crack rocks with your head not your muscle, so we spent hours looking for cracks, lines and weak spots and advanced …slowly.
But if that doesn’t work…use physics.
However after a certain point it got the better enough and we fell on plan B, heating the rock with tyres and pouring water on it till it exploded. I was slightly skeptical, but Waafi, Mohammed and the rest of the lads assured me it was a winner…and so off I went to pick
up 20 tyres.
Sure enough, hours of burning, jumping (and jumping out of the way) and exploding rock, finally saw the thing through….you learn something every day…
Now just to get on with the build.
Inspiration in Akchour
As I’ve said before it’s been difficult up here in the Rif at last, to find other examples of buildings that I could draw on for inspiration and ideas. The house shown above, really looks as I would like to model Farm Finn; simple, clan and linking with the local environment and building style.
But there’s so much else that I want to do, both with the house and the
land…I’ve ideas, but it would really help to see something similar, even if that just helps me believe that what I am trying to do isn’t madness!
And then, up in Akchour at the entrance to the Talassemtane National Park, there it was…inspiration.
And more….
It’s not that any of these images reflect a perfect image of what I am trying to do in Loubar. More they ad to the dialogue. Inform ideas. Allow me to expand o things I am already thnking about and add new nuances or details. This place is clearly aiming at a different tourism market, more group oriented, which is no bad thing in terms of finance…and they clearly have more finance than I do.
And more…
The truth is that there are a few places in Morocco that I need to visit, to get ideas and inspiration, but also to make links with other people who are looking at ecological ideas linked to tourism…maybe that’s something for the winter?
Inspiration comes in many forms up here.
Which reminds me…time to fit in a swim…now where can we do that round here?
