Where in the world.......?

So. Once I'd finally got on board with the idea of a self-build somewhere else, the discussions began about the Where? We eventually drew up a list of criteria - the 'must haves' and the 'would be nice to haves...' but also the 'not likely', the 'heaven forbid' and the 'never in a million years' criteria.

 The negatives were easy - mainly things like: no big cities or large towns, not near factories or industrial estates, not by/close to motorways or very busy 'A' roads and not south. There were others but it's so long ago that they're lost in the mists of time!

The 'must have' list was quite long....too long to be useful, so we had to whittle it down to a short list that we both agreed on. It's fair to say that this took some time!😄 We eventually created the definitive list, but not necessarily in this order:

• a decent sized plot or a 'knocker-downer'
• in the north 
• rural
• long distance views (as our current house is totally surrounded by huge mature trees)
• dry stone walls area
• large village/small town with a doctors, dentist, village shop, community center and pub
• an active local community
• good hill walking accessed directly from the house
• within a 20 minute drive of a swimming pool - very high on my list!
• not too remote
• ideally on a south facing slope

The search began..... and what a search it turned out to be. Imagine if you will, the ups and downs, the highs and lows and the rollercoaster ride of  'just' trying to buy a house in England when you don't know where you actually want to live. Now double or triple those emotions and you'll have a vague idea of what the search to buy a piece of land or a 'knocker-downer' in an unknown area turned out to be.

We started north. We have family and friends near Preston, Kirkby Lonsdale and Skipton - all lovely areas, pretty villages, nice communities, lots of hills, plenty of drystone walls and long distance views, so lots of the boxes were theoretically ticked. They all appeared to have potential but, once we started looking for a place, various problems cropped up:

• Firstly, all towns and cities are obliged to have a register of plots of land available for self-builders. Great idea we thought, but as we added our names to a wide range of registers in different places and looked at the land that was available, we spotted a flaw: what little land there was was basically the odds and sods of land the big builders didn't want, had rejected as too difficult or was in an awful position. The classic ones were a tiny triangle of land trapped between a motorway, a mainline railway and a very busy dual carriageway and one on a very steep north facing slope with a swamp at the bottom! We kept our names on the lists, but we never heard a peep from a single Local Authority. Of course, because no self-builder will touch such skanky sites, the L.A's can claim that there's no demand for self-build land and therefore don't have to try to provide anything better. It was a somewhat demoralising start.

• The area near Preston (1) has become commuter belt with vast amounts of new builds going on. This is because the City Council had failed to create the legal documented requirement of a 5 year supply of local housing land, so any house building applications were assessed against National Policy rather than Local Policy. Building developers had spotted this gap, and by using National Policy assessments (and possibly by knowing the right people in Parliament?!) they got Planning Permission for large housing estates in the area, so huge amounts of crappy new housing estates were being chucked up at speed. Just the village Ower Dave now lives in has had almost 200 new houses built since 2022 and the 6 year fight by the local community to get permission refused for yet another 95 houses has only just been won (Well done Ower Dave and the Parish Councilfor sticking with the epic battle!) But the village has been swamped and changed by the houses already built and, obviously, the promised infrastructure improvements for health, education and food shops have never materialised. Why am I not surprised that the developers have found loopholes to renege on Planning Conditions? Anyway, it wasn't the area for us. Too busy, far too full, only flat farmland with no public footpaths and no swimming pool close by. Rejected.

• The Kirkby Lonsdale area (2) is stunning. It's close to the gorgeous mountain of Ingleborough, the lovely town of Ingleton, lots of fabulous walks, some great caves and the coast as well as The Courtyard Dairy  - the world's best cheese shop! BUT it was in between The Forest of Bowland Protected Area and the Yorkshire Dales National Park, so there was not a cat in a dog's home chance of getting Planning Permission to build a new house, plus it was just too far away from our daughters in Chesterfield and Nottingham and Himself's parents in Leicester for us to ever be able to do a quick pop-in visit for a cuppa and a chat and, realistically, not an easy route in an emergency situation. Much as we loved the area and the walking, it was a bit too remote. Rejected. 

• Skipton (3) is a very pretty town full of outdoorsy people, outdoorsy shops and some lovely pubs, bistros and a very nice 25m swimming pool. It's an area we know pretty well as we have spent lots of time around there over the years. The scenery is fabulous and, occasionally, quite dramatic. It's a great area for walking, cycling and wild swimming. It ticked LOTS of boxes and we were hopeful of finding somewhere - we even signed up with all the local Estate Agents to get notifications of new properties and started to look at places quite seriously.....until one journey back home to Chesterfield took well over 4 hours instead of the usual 2 and a bit! We realised that, if we moved up there and there was an emergency with Himself's elderly parents in Leicester (1&1/2 hours south of Chesterfield) we could be caught up in a 6 hour plus journey to get to to them and, as we knew that Himself's dad had a life limiting illness, that meant the Skipton area wasn't an option. Sadly rejected.

We then had a 'now what do we do' period as we thought about all the areas north of us that we liked. In amongst our musings, an old friend offered us the use of her holiday cottage in Swale Dale (4) up in the north of North Yorkshire, not that far from the border with County Durham so we could investigate that area. It was absolutely delightful, glorious hilly scenery, drystone walls, close-ish to a couple of nice towns and it really amused me to find a village called Crackpot, BUT it was in the Yorkshire Dales National Park so hopeless for getting Planning permission for a new build. It was also an area with lots of little country roads, often only one lane with passing places, slow hilly routes, no swimming pools within a sensible distance and the main route back south was via the A1....which as anyone who has used the A1 knows only too well, can be a nightmare because of the huge volumes of traffic using it and, as our drive back to Chesterfield showed, it was too far north and too long a journey to Leicester. Rejected, although we had a very nice time up there!

We were then told about the Saddleworth Valley (5) in Lancashire. As someone who has Yorkshire running through me like the words in a stick of rock, I had to take a deep breath before I agreed to go look at somewhere in Lancashire, but go we did. It was very pretty, the villages of Diggle and Delph were very sweet and it wasn't too far from my friends in North Manchester, but it's an incredibly popular place to live and the prices reflected that. It was also east of Oldham, which meant the westerly winds would carry dirt and pollution from Oldham across to the valley. Too expensive and too close to Oldham. Rejected.

By this point, a good 18 months or more into our search, we had visited dozens of potential sites, houses, knocker-downers, ex-chapels, barns, manky bungalows, dilapidated farm houses and even a grotty old house with a decommissioned abattoir on site ....we actually seriously considered that one and visited a couple of times as it was in a great location but common sense prevailed in the end as it had been on the market for a long time and the farmer who owned it refused to budge on the price plus he controlled the very potholed access road which, according to the neighbour, he refused to improve as he could still get his tractor up it!

We had also eventually learned that if we thought somewhere was too remote, we didn't actually need to go and see it because it was always too remote - but we did have to go see quite a few before admitting defeat on remoteness!

I was starting to get hacked off at ever finding anywhere and with them all being so far away from our family, so I started sending Himself 'Right Move' links to places in Derbyshire (6) instead. He took some persuading because parts of Derbyshire are in the Peak District National Park or the Derbyshire Dales National Park and parts of the area didn't have dry stone walls.....but it was all considerably closer to our daughters and his parents, so we started looking in earnest down there instead (although Himself still found the occasional site further north for a while!)

The trailing round to suss out the areas began all over again. We found a couple of grotty, run down towns, plenty of gorgeous villages, fabulous scenery and secret valleys, all with great hill walking potential, but the prices were prohibitively high in the Peak District and the chances of getting Planning Permission were slim to impossible.......until, one morning I came home to find Himself positively jiggling with excitement as he announced "I've found somewhere interesting!" We'd been here before, so I didn't get my hopes up as we went to look on his computer at what he'd found.

Long story short, A grotty cottage with Planning Permission for a big extension set in a good sized garden had just come on the market. The cottage was really a knocker-downer in a great location in a tiny village just south of Ashbourne near the Derbyshire/Staffordshire border. We phoned and got a viewing that afternoon then spent the next few hours researching the area, the village, Ashbourne, walking routes and swimming pools! On paper it ticked lots of our boxes.....

It was a beautiful drive down, the sun was shining, spring was in the air and we were both trying desperately not to get too excited - we'd been here before, many a time! We got got the village a bit early and had a wander round - pretty Gothic revival houses, a sweet little community room, friendly people.... it was looking hopeful. We walked up the road to the cottage, leaned on the wooden gates, looked at the cottage, looked at the view, looked at each other and said in unison "this is it!!" Going into the cottage and seeing the views from upstairs then walking round the garden just confirmed it for us. This was indeed "it".

First thing the following morning we put in our offer, then had a stressful 24 hours of waiting. When I came out of yoga the next morning, my phone pinged.

The message from himself simply said YES!!! 

We'd got our site!

Although none of the marked search areas look very big on this map, they represent well over two years of seemingly endless and often fruitless computer searching, months of driving to and around the various areas (and a few other areas that aren't even mentioned because one visit to the area was enough for us to know that area wasn't right for us!), plenty of getting lost down remoteroads and tracks, sadly deciding that some sites were just too big a project even for us, many a nice lunch in pretty towns, swimming pools investigated and drive times from potential sites considered, high hopes repeatedly dashed - one was a reasonable site in a nice village...but the woman working in the village shop was SO unnecessarily rude to us that we instantly decided we didn't want to live in that village! And there were tears, usually mine, of depair that we'd ever find the 'right' place for us.......and then we did.

 

 Our Next Big Adventure

I grew up with parents who loved doing up old houses to make them better homes for our family and this is a legacy that Ower Dave and I have carried on and, in turn, so have our daughters First Born and Last Born. Himself and I have completely renovated two houses of our own and helped other people on countless others...it's what we do. Well, I don't do electricity, but apart from that I'll try my hand at anything - I particularly enjoy a good bit of demolition and have a smaller, lighter-weight lump hammer that serves me very well! We know about old houses, we understand old houses and have always said we would never live in a new house......unless we built it ourselves.

This is because modern house building in England is totally dominated by several countrywide building companies who build big housing estates of identical houses very badly. They effectively block Government changes to better insulation in houses, never fit mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems, rarely fit solar panels on roofs, lie about gas central heating boilers being more effective/efficient than air source or ground source heat pumps or claim that they should still be in use because they are 'hydrogen ready' ...... even though the method of producing enough hydrogen doesn't even exist yet! *Liz climbs back down off her soapbox at this point before she gets carried away with her disgust at the big builders*

Their business model is to build as quickly and cheaply as possible in order to maximise their already vast profits. This 'chuck'em up and sell 'em quick' approach results in shoddily built, poorly insulted, damp houses which are expensive to run and NEVER meet the energy use targets the profiteering builders claim they will. The energy usage can by as high as 70% more than the builders claim it will be because the building is never tested during the build process and most of the corner cutting to keep cost down is done on all the areas that are covered up - things like the points where the walls and floor meet not being sealed or saving pennies on insulation boards by not butting the boards right up to each other, resulting in 'thermal bridges'  between the boards where cold can get in. The poor build quality and the performance gap between design and in-use energy performance is shocking, but they're still getting away with it. Wonder why? Friends in high places perhaps?!

Note: The 'Performance Gap' is the difference between the actual heating demand and what was predicted at the design stage.

However.....during Lockdown in 2020, remember that very weird time?! Unbeknown to me, Himself had somehow wandered across some information about Passivhaus buildings online and started quietly delving deeper into it. Eventually, in late Autumn of 2020, he presented me with the fully formed idea that we should sell our beautiful house and build a Passivhaus! To say I was gobsmacked was putting it mildly!

I had always imagined that this house would be our 'forever home' even though the realistic Occupational Therapist in me knew deep down that it wouldn't actually be a good house for our older age as it would be impossible to future-proof it without loosing its delightful character  ...... but I definitely wasn't at the point of considering moving, let alone building a house and even less ready to build something I'd never even heard of! 

Himself was somewhat surprised and not a little miffed that I didn't instantly dance a jig around the kitchen in joy and excitement at his idea - until I pointed out that he'd obviously been thinking about this for months and had just dumped it on me as a fully fledged plan without any preamble or warning! We then agreed, him somewhat reluctantly as he was itching to get started, that I needed time to process what he'd told me and to do some Passivhaus research of my own as well as getting my head round the possibility of leaving both my beloved home and uprooting myself from a town I enjoyed living in and where I had friends and an active social life, to go somewhere as yet undetermined to not only build a house but to start from scratch to build new friendships and community.

It took me about 3 months of researching and soul searching to feel that this was something we could do and to feel confident enough that we could actually manage the process without murdering each other or ending up divorced!

What is Passivhaus?

The Passivhaus concept was developed by Dr. Wolfgang Feist back in the 1970's and 80's when he realised that over one third of fossil fuel energy consumption was being used to heat buildings! As a physicist, it was clear to him that there had to be a better way to heat houses, reduce the heat losses and avoid creating damp houses .....so he set about to find a reliable procedure to depict the thermal behaviour of buildings. This all led to the development of the Passivhaus standard.

The Passivhaus Standard

Passivhaus is a suite of performance and comfort standards for buildings that reliably deliver energy efficiency, comfort and quality. There are three core principles in the integrated approach to designing a Passivhaus, which are:

• Detailed performance and comfort criteria
• Modelling each project using the Passivhaus Planning Package (PHPP) More of this later
• Rigorous Quality Assurance and Passivhaus Certification

The Passivhaus Trust defines five Passivhaus Principles to give a project-specific solution. These are:

• High performance insulation which is optimised for comfort, energy demand and the climate zone of the specific build
• Use of a continuous high performance airtight layer to minimise heat loss, eliminate draughts and maximise fabric longevity
• Minimised thermal bridging to prevent cold spots and mould
• High performance window specification and shading to provide optimum comfort and efficiency in summer and winter
• Quiet and efficient Mechanical ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR - more of this later too) to deliver high indoor air quality

In short, a Passivhaus is a robust and well-built, eco-friendly, highly insulated, draught-free, cheap to run box with good quality ventilation and which remains at the right temperature year round.   

Each house is individually modelled for its latitude, longitude, altitude and orientation in order to maximise performance and minimise overheating risks in summer. It is also tested for airtightness several times during the build process - this doesn't mean you can't open any windows,of course you can, it just means it's thoroughly checked to ensure there are no draughts or cold bridges anywhere, has proper ventilation and the correct amount of air changes per hour to achieve high quality indoor air.

 AND.....if the house passes all the tests and achieves Passivhaus standards, you get a little plaque to put on the outside of your house! What's not to like?!😀

If you want more information about Passivhaus (which I hope I've piqued your interest enough to do) here is the link to the website. The Passivhaus Trust

Follow the link then click on 'About Passivhaus' on the home page. Mind you, the whole website is interesting and will help you understand where we're coming from and why it appealed to us - and I guarantee you'll never look at other building methods in quite the same way again!

Of course whilst I was doing my research, Himself was avidly reading anything he could lay his hands on about Passivhaus - such as The Passivhaus Handbook.... The Passivhaus Bible, as it became fondly known as in our house - which, as a 1920's single glazed, very draughty house, was anything BUT Passivhaus!

I have read it as well, but Himself knows it so well he can practically quote from it!

So...having been converted to the idea of building our own Passivhaus, we moved to Stage Two.

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 Bhutan - The Tiger's Nest Monastery and beyond.

The final 'big' thing for us  to do in Bhutan was to visit the Tiger's Nest Monastery. It wasn't about ticking it off on a list, it was a genuine desire to see a place that had fascinated me since I was a child. 

The Paro Taktsang Monastery was built in the late 17th century on the site of a cave set into the cliff. Although it's commonly known to westerners by the English name of the Tiger’s Nest Monastery, Taktsang more accurately translates to “tigress’ lair” and takes its name from the legend of its founding.

According to that legend, the 8th-century Indian Buddhist master Guru Rinpoche was carried up the mountain on the back of a disciple who had transformed herself into a tigress. Once they arrived, Guru Rinpoche then spent 3 years, 3 months, 3 days and 3 hours meditating in the cave. He also subdued a demon, whose face is visible from a distance if you squint at the rock for long enough! After he had finished meditating and subduing, it became a holy place and became known as Paro Taktsang. Much of the Monastery complex was rebuilt in 1998 after a butter lamp induced fire. It was all redone in the original style and already looks old. we wouldn't have known it was a rebuild if our guide hadn't told us. There are 4 main temples, all with caves where various gods did, saw or said various important things. each one had a monk in there and they all had CCTV cameras which were monitored externally from one of the flat 'landings'.

The Monastery complex wraps around the mountain on a narrow ascending ridge some 10,232 feet (3119 meters) above the Paro valley. The round trip to the Monastery is about 4 miles and has an awful lot of ascending and descending - on a huge amount of steps! It appears and disappears depending on where you are on the path, but you actually end up higher than the Monastery at one point. As we had been in Bhutan for over three weeks by this point and had trekked at over 1000 feet higher for 6 days, Andy and I  had adapted to the altitude and were walking at pretty much our normal walking speed. I was using my trekking poles as my left knee was still sore and swollen from the 24 miles we did on the final day of our trek but we were still overtaking people who were huffing and puffing their way up the mountain. It turned out that most tourists fly into Paro and then 'do' the Monastery the very next day before their bodies have had chance to acclimatise. Nevertheless it did amuse me to be overtaking people considerably younger than us!

First glimpse.

If there's a prayer wheel, it just has to be spun!

Getting closer.

Looking down on the Monastery complex.

And realising I'd got to do 750 steps...in both directions!

The bridge is the lowest point.....it was all up again from there to the Monastery.

Looking out from the bridge.

There are no photos from inside the Monastery because you have to leave your bags, shoes, phones and cameras with the security people. The Bhutanese people got sick of seeing their beloved and revered monasteries appearing on social media, often accompanied by comments which showed that the person who'd posted them had very little understanding or knowledge about Bhutanese culture or Buddhism....so they banned photos. The bonus is that you get to see and experience the Monasteries for real rather than just through a lens for the Instagram shot, which is actually a far better way to do it.

 

I had been a bit worried that it wouldn't live up to my expectations, particularly as we had been to so many temples where we had been the only people there and The Tiger's Nest is a bit of tourist trap/ bucket list place. Fortunately, there were plenty of quiet places to be found and, whilst it did often lack the peace and serenity of some of the other ancient temples, it was still a beautiful place that didn't disappoint.

I can't remember much about this building, but I do recall that a famous Bhutanese person was born in there.

Paro runway! The main road is between the trees and the end of the runway. The planes come in from the left before doing a 90* turn to land. Unfortunately we didn't see a plane doing it! 

We had booked a 30 minute archery lesson at the hotel - figured we ought to give it a go as it's the national sport. Unfortunately, the archery teacher never turned up.....but two Bhutanese guests at the hotel heard us talking to the receptionist about it and very kindly volunteered to give us a lesson! The targets on the white wooden tombstones were set 50 meters apart (it's normally 120-150 meters but they're clearly kind to tourists!) and, if you hit the target, there is an obligatory happy dance done by the archer! We had an excellent and frequently hilarious hour and a half with them. Andy got to do the happy dance and I got to laugh a lot when Andy's arrow got embedded in a tree! The two men were really good teachers who refused to let us pay them as they said they'd had a really good time teaching us! It was such a fun thing to do ...but those bows are so powerful !!! I didn't have the strength to really pull back the bow, even the smaller one, but I did manage to get close-ish to the target a few times. My arms and shoulders ached the following day.

Sunset over the Paro river.

Paro Dzong at night.

Paro Dzong in daylight.

Inside the Dzong.

The Watch Tower. It was badly damaged in an earthquake in 2009. The built a museum behind it to house the contents and have been renovating it ever since. Apparently it should be finished in a couple of months.......of Bhutanese time! It was a really interesting museum though.

An ancient bridge

....and some dubious electricity cables under it.

Stunning views of Everest on the flight to Kathmandu.

Unfortunately, it didn't stay this clear as we flew over the Kathmandu valley because of the fug  of greeny-brown pollution sitting over the entire valley. Once on the ground you could taste the pollution and it got worse in the centre of Kathmandu. From our hotel we wandered into the old town and down the smaller roads and alleys. There was a lot of evidence of damage from the bad earthquake of 2015. Many buildings were propped up with wooden timbers that didn't look strong enough to hold anything up if there was another quake. Lots of building work in progress. Durbar Square was closed to tourist because of all the work going on there - so much destruction. I found it very sad as I had some very happy memories of the area as it was back in 1987. I did enjoy the chaos of the side streets and we had fun looking at the very dodgy wiring everywhere!

Our flights back to Manchester were long and uneventful. Abu Dhabi airport was just as boring as on the way out and we arrived back to snow and our taxi driver's slightly surreal news that Donald Trump had been elected President. we thought he was joking! Welcome home.

Trekking in Bhutan

Trekking in Bhutan

On the Monday morning after our free weekend in Thimpu, our delightful guide Tensin and our driver Dragbaar collected us and the very small bags of personal gear that we'd need for 6 nights in the mountains. About 30 minutes drive out of Thimpu we pulled into a layby where two men and lots of boxes, panniers were waiting for us and the packhorses. Dragbaar doesn't 'do' walking, so he left us in the safe hands on Ten and Mr Lobsang - a small, sturdy man with a ready smile and a big, old fashioned canvas knapsack, which turned out to be a bit of a magic bag! He was very much in charge, but in a quiet and confident unassuming sort of way. He later turned out to be part mountain goat when descending tracks at speed!

The horses were loaded up and we set off...straight up the mountainside. It was an easy and well used path as it led up up to a Monastery. The path even had 4 'resting stations' with benches along the route, but we were walking well and only needed to stop at two of them. 

 

Once we'd reached the monastery, which took about two hours, we rested on a low wall looking at the stunning views. The monks were clearly doing a lot of work on the land around the monastery  - bringing in a harvest of some sort of grain, doing their laundry and building dry stone walls but they also surprised us with cups of hot, sweet tea - perfect after a long climb! They're clearly used to trekkers!

 Pause for thought!

There had been some sort of problem with one of the horses so, initially, Ten said we'd camp at the monastery for the night instead of at the usual campsite by a lake higher up the mountain. This concerned me a bit because it was a long pull up from the monastery to the summit and we'd got a 15 km walk, measured from that campsite, the following day. 

It was decided that we'd do a little walk up to the south of the monastery for lunch so that we'd at least been up higher than we'd sleep. It was a fairly easy 40 minute walk before Mr Lobsang stopped us by some prayer flags which had a incredible view of the mountains, Thimpu in the valley bottom and the red roof of the monastery just visible - in the bottom right hand corner of the photo. Then from his knapsack he produced a large thermos which contained a 5 stack tiffin tin full of food then tea, coffee, plates, cutlery and cups - it really was a magic bag! There were 2 tins of boiled rice, then vegetables, cheese and hard boiled eggs....plus apples and bananas for pudding! Walking at altitude certainly makes us hungry.

The view from our picnic spot.

Lunch.

After lunch Ten announced that the horse problem had been sorted and the the camp was now set up just below the ridge. If you look back at the picnic spot photo you can see 3 blue tents on the grassy plateau. Not your average campsite as the only facilities were what the horses could carry but we've wild camped for long enough to be very used to this and we still see electric hookups as a bit of a treat! It wasn't the campsite we should have been at, but at least we didn't have to start from right back down at the monastery the following morning!

The tents were a large ridge tent for us to sleep in, a food tent with table and chairs for us and a mess tent for Ten, Mr Lobsang, "Boy" who did all the odd jobs and helped with the food preparation (and who we never heard called anything but "Boy") plus the man in charge of the horses. There was also the luxury of a toilet tent! Posh camping!

They had seen us descending so had cups of tea and bowls of hot water for us to wash in when we got to the camp. It cools down very quickly at that altitude, so it's important to do the washing and changing into thermal layers, down jackets, hats etc as quickly as possible once you've stopped for the day. They'd laid our our sleeping tent with insulated inflatable mats, sleeping bags, fleece liners, blankets and, joy of joys......hot water bottles when we went to bed!

I think it's fair to say that Bhutanese maps aren't really up to the high standards of Ordnance Survey maps that we're used to in the UK. At least Ten and Mr Lobsang knew the way!

Up, breakfasted and off by 08.00 the following morning - and it was a grueling day which started with a very steep ascent to the summit that made my legs wobble! It took us 3 hours to get to the lake where we should have camped  and involved a lot of altitude changes with all the upping and downing, so I was incredibly grateful that we'd not had to start from right back at the monastery and that I'd heeded the advice to use trekking poles. The views were magnificent though - I'm always happy when I can see snow-capped mountains!

In the photo below you can see the track winding along just below the ridge behind us. A lot of the track was grotty, loose and slippery rocks, very much like Snowdonia only much, much bigger!

The horses, "Boy" and the horseman passed us as we reached the pass below the summit.

The Pass was at 4220 m or 13,845 feet

Snow-capped mountains everywhere!

From the summit it was a long, long contouring walk round a mountain on the path that wound it's way through rhododendron forests and over rocks before a slow descent to one of the most stunning lakes I've ever seen - and it was completely surrounded by steep mountains. 

It had taken 7&1/2 hours to do 20 kms and we were shattered...but what a place to camp! It turned out that we should have been camping at the other end of the lake, where the smoke is coming from, but the Crown Prince of Bhutan and his retinue were camping there so we had a sweet little site by the stream instead.

 Our evening meal was a very tasty and filling soup followed by rice, sardines, green beans, vegetables and cheese plus a delicious potato curry. We then had hit tinned fruit for pudding - which was surprisingly nice!

It was cold overnight and we slept in our thermals. It was bitterly cold, about -10, when we woke up so we had to put our clothes inside our sleeping bags to warm them up before we got dressed - it's a long time since I've had to do that! There was a heavy frost, but that's only to be expected at 3800m (12,470ft) in November I guess. At least the Prince's camp was equally chilly!

Looking out from our tent at Andy.

Staying in our tent drinking tea and doing the all important job of warming my clothes up!

Whilst we were pottering around after breakfast getting organised for our walk two of the Prince's bodyguards turned up. Apparently they'd already been to the camp first thing to check out who we were and what we were doing. They had a rapid conversation in Dzonkha with Ten with one English phrase of  "once in a lifetime". Turned out that the Prince wanted to invite us to go for a row on the lake in one of his 2 boats to make up for the inconvenience of camping at the wrong end of the lake. This is a holy lake and it's the first time ever anyone other than the royal family have been allowed to go on it. Obviously we said yes! 

Andy, Ten and I were kitted out in life jackets then, along with three soldiers, we paddled a circuit of the lake, took loads of photos, waved at our bewildered and astonished crew and rowed back to get out below the Prince's camp. The only thing that would have topped it would to have met the Prince himself, but we had to settle for asking the highest ranked soldier to give our profound thanks to the Prince instead. Ten was beside himself. He was literally in shock. The Bhutanese royal family are revered by the people. Things like this just don't happen - until they do! Our normally chatty guide was speechless for about half an hour whilst the rest of the crew couldn't stop talking about it!

Ten in total shock on the boat!

Once back at the camp we discovered a problem - the pack horses had disappeared overnight because the horse man hadn't tied them up. He had one job!!!

After some discussion amongst Ten, Mr Lobsang and "Boy" (the horse man had gone looking for the horses!) it was decided that we'd do the first part of today's walk and, depending on what happened with the horses, we'd either carry on to tonight's camp or come back to the lake camp.

I'd woken up with a snotty nose and a sinus headache which even a paddle on the lake couldn't shift, so my breathing was heavy and laborious as we climbed slowly and steadily up out of the valley. We sat looking at the view whilst they walked off to try to get a phone signal. 

Looking back down to the lake.

We were eventually called to join them on the ridge for our picnic lunch - rice with paneer and peas, mushrooms and cheese and a potato and vegetable mix followed by grapes. All washed down with tea.

It was a phenomenal place to have a picnic - the lake way below us on one side, Paro in the valley below us on the other and totally surrounded by high mountains. it was stunning in a way that photos just can't capture.

It had been decided in the phone calls that the safest thing to do was to go back down to the campsite at the lake. Ten set off like a rocket down to the camp to make sure that everything was still there - he didn't trust the horse man not to have gone back with the horses, packed everything up and to have set off to the next camp, which would have been disastrous as there wasn't enough daylight time to walk to the next camp ..... and we'd have had to blag a bed from the Prince!

The Bhutanese are very factual when it comes to naming their birds. This translated as 'yellow beaked bird with long tail' 

Once back down at camp we washed and changed into our thermals and were having a cup of tea and some popcorn when three of the Prince's soldiers walked past with fishing rods on their way to survey the lake to see if it's going to be good enough for tourists to fish there. When the soldiers came back, being me, being from Yorkshire and being nosy, I casually asked if they'd caught anything - as you do! The oldest soldier said "no" but then stopped to talk with me. He was very well spoken with excellent and almost accent-free English. he had an air of authority about him and was clearly used to organising things. He told me that the Prince was a keen sportsman and was looking at setting up a triathlon in Bhutan - which would involve swimming in the lake! Brrrrr! 

Andy joined us and we discussed sustainability, rural depopulation and many other things. The Prince is currently touring rural populations to find out what the people need to help them develop more skills and stay in the countryside - hence the camping. So we told him about WOOF - the World Organisation of Organic Farmers, which might be useful for the Prince's aims. The man was very interested in that.

After he'd gone, Ten and the crew came out of the Mess tent where they'd been hiding. It turned out we'd just spent over half an hour chatting and laughing with the Prince's Aide-de-Camp and they were  in awe of us being able to do that so freely and beside themselves to have seen that as well as the trip on the lake this morning. I'll talk to anyone, me!

As it was so cold again we were invited to sit by the open fire in the Mess tent to have our meal. The tent was lit by the fire, a single candle and a rather useless little battery lamp that gave out less light than our head torches! They brought chairs in from the meal tent for me, Andy and Mr Lobsang , whilst Ten sat on a rolled up mat and Boy and the horse man sat directly on the ground seems it was all about  status. We gathered that they all slept on the floor in there too.

They all seemed very comfortable with us being in there and we were chatting away when the crew - who were facing the door, went silent. The Prince's bodyguard and a soldier had appeared in the doorway carrying a bucket! They had brought us 4 big rainbow trout as a gift from the Prince - they  were so fresh that they were still flapping! It was obvious that Boy didn't know what to do with them (and I didn't want to him to lose face by offering to do it for him!) so the soldier dealt with the fish outside. The bodyguard accepted Mr Lobsang's chair and sat chatting and laughing with us for about half an hour or so before taking his leave. Ten and the crew were in awe again, but Ten did manage to answer some trek-related questions from the bodyguard. After they'd gone, nobody - including us, could quite believe it. What a surreal day!

After yesterday's debacle with the horses and us having to stay two nights in the same camp, it was decided that we'd have to do 1&1/2 days' distance today - 17 kms and a similar distance again tomorrow to make up for the distance we should have done yesterday. Ten announced that, as we'd already been up onto the ridge yesterday, instead of repeating that then walking along the length of the ridge to tonight's camp, we'd do  the (supposedly) easier and lower horse track. 

Andy, Ten and I set off following the river steeply down - very tough on my knees even with my trekking poles! I had to really concentrate on the track as I am somewhat prone to accidents  and an accident in that isolated valley would have been a nightmare to sort out!

Just before we reached the valley floor, Mr Lobsang and Boy came bounding down the track at high speed, bouncing from rock to rock but barely touching them - is was so impressive compared to our cautious descent. They really were mountain goats in human form!

Mr Lobsang on the bridge!

With Mr Lobsang in his usual position at the back and providing snacks and encouragement when necessary,we set off up a very steep and grueling ascent. The pack horses had created 'steps'...except that the tread of each step was hollowed out by their hooves. I  found the height of the risers and the depth of the hollowed out treads an incredibly difficult combination for my short legs, but Andy, being a foot taller than me, barely noticed. After multiple ascents and descents, it was a massive relief to get up onto the ridge and be able to rest for a while and have a snack from Mr Lobsang's magic knapsack!

Being up on the ridge was lovely and at least the ups and the downs were nowhere near as steep or deep as previously - especially as all the 'downing' had really begun to affect my left knee. It was fine on 'alongings' and most of the 'uppings', but the 'downings'....ouch! 

We walked past a nomad camp, which I thought was the campsite we should have been at last night. Then we eventually walked through another area which had quite a few tents and a lot of rubbish - we thought this was our campsite for the night because both Andy and I reckoned we should have reached it by now. Not far beyond that campsite we stopped for lunch....once Ten had chased a couple of yaks away! 

Lunch was the fish from the Prince....although I don't think they had fresh fish very often as it had been just chopped into chunks! It was absolutely delicious though!

Ten was very vague about how far we still had to go, so we plodded on expecting to see the campsite at any time. The track was very clear and well used. It was sandy, stony and covered in roots in some places and lovely open grassland in other, but always the mountains around us.

Eventually we were becoming concerned because time was marching on and we needed to get to the camp before dark as we didn't have our head torches with us. Andy asked Ten directly where the campsite was. Ten admitted we were well past where we should have camped and heading towards the original final night camp.....because the horse man (him again!!) had disobeyed Ten and Mr Lobsang's instructions about where to camp and independently decided to continue on! We were not impressed.

 Andy and Ten had a difficult conversation because Andy felt we'd been lied to all day. Ten agreed he should have told us what the horse man had done as we passed the campsite, but he was worried about our reactions. We were actually more cross about him not telling us than we were about having to do 2 days walk in one although I was really starting to struggle with my knee, which was badly swollen by this point. Ten told me I was amazing for keeping going. I pointed out that I didn't really have any choice as I had no intention of sleeping out on the mountain with the yaks! There wasn't much he could say to that.

Ten then pointed out the Jela Dzong Temple in the distance and told us the campsite was 10 minutes before the temple. It turned out to be about 10 minutes after the temple and down a steep track. I have never been so glad to see our tents and sit down! We'd done a tough 25 kms instead of 17. The horse man was conspicuous by his absence all evening. Ten said that the horse man had decided that the planned camp wasn't good enough, there wasn't sufficient water and he knew we could do the extra distance - such faith! We suspected he actually just wanted to finish by lunchtime as they normally did.

It was an early start and they were packing up camp even as we were eating breakfast - aided by a random pony that wandered into our camp and got  a guy line caught on his pack harness and pulled a tent down.

The start of the final descent off the mountains.

My knee was still swollen and sore, but not as bad as the previous night. We did a steady 5-6 km walk down a sandy, rooty track with some stony areas and a couple of slightly slippery stream walks. I was being VERY careful as I didn't want to jeopardise our walk up the The Tiger's Nest Monastry the following day. I was very happy to see Dragbaar and his car, especially as it was another 5 kms to the 'real' end of the road! Ten had phoned him to ask him to bring his car as far up the track as he could.

The goodbyes were a bit awkward. We were supposed to tip the crew, which we did...but we Brits are just not very good at tipping and find it excruciatingly embarrassing. Mr Lobsang, who had spoken hardly any English to us all week, insisted in English that the horse man was NOT to be given a tip as he had caused all the problems and I'd been injured as a result of his behaviour. We obeyed, but it did all feel like a slightly unsatisfactory end to a great trip and a mostly nice relationship with them.

Ten and Dragbaar took us back to Thimpu and left us at our hotel where, to our amazement, we were given the best suite in the hotel....and we had a wonderful night's sleep!