Thursday 1st December, 2011

After a little break from this as gardening leave was a wee bit mundane I thought I would update.....sitting on a verandah of Summerville Lodge overlooking Castlereagh Lake up in the Hill Country of Sri Lanka. It is close to perfection. We flew out of Heathrow on Tuesday evening down the back of Sri Lanka Airways which was fairly grim and got straight into a car at Colombo Airport for a 4 hour journey to the Lodge. It was worth doing the journey in one go and the drive was a good way to get a feel for the place. Later in the season you can get a seaplane which wisks you here in a jiffy I suppose. Anyway, the place is idyllic. We got up this morning and after sumptuous breakfast set off on a walk through the tea plantation behind our bungalow. Totally beautiful. The temperature was heaven and we wandered round the 9 km trail in 1.5 hours. Sad old boy that I am I then went and ran the same trail much to the surprise of the ladies picking tea with whom we had exchanged greetings shortly beforehand! Quick game of croquet after lunch ( don't ask the result ) and now a title siesta before heading into Hatton to buy pepper and tea. This is the life.