Wow.... did we have a storm .... now we have become used to having some wild weather at certain times of the year, our house sits at the head of two vallies, one at the front and one from the side, and the weather seems to funnel up those vallies and hits the house . We can have huge winds and noise when the village a mere klm away over the other side of the hill has a mild breeze...
But Tuesday and wednesday... well... it was amazing... Ive never heard wind or noise like it... there actually wasnt that much rain in all, but it was driven by the high winds into places we've never had water in before... and obviously we had no sleep for two nights... we sat up in bed at 1.30 am on the weds night/early morning thursday listening to the roof of our wood barn blow around the garden... scary... very scary...
But.... when we got up thursday morning a miracle had happened.... yes the barn roof was gone, including the huge wooden beams that were still attached to the roof... (it was still all in one piece up on the land at the back of the house) but all our wood was still DRY!!! I'd been so worried all night about the wood, the barn can be fixed, but a ton of wet wood would have been a huge problem to us, we have guests arriving in a couple of days and no wood to keep them warm, we rely so much on wood here, for cooking, heating and drying the washing, but more so to keep the cottage warm for guests...
So for the wood to be dry was amazing... someone was definately smiling on us that night... the wind must have changed direction almost straight away after the roof went and the back wall of the barn being higher sheltered the wood...
So 'himself ' spent most of the day thursday stripping the tin off the beams lugging the huge beams back into place and re tinnning the roof... we have now done as the Portuguese do... and slung all kinds of heavey junk on the top too... old beams, an old car wheel we didnt know what to do with... rocks bricks and all manner of stuff... anything in fact that will weigh it down for the future... it may not look as nice as before... but I feel safer..
Poor Beesa, she spent two nights quaking in the cubby in the 'safe bed' we have for her there, she is terrified of the loud noise... she always seems to run to the cubby when shes scared so we've made her a bed in there to be comfortable, its the least we can do. Rick or I made sure we checked on her every couple of hours all night but she just would leave the safe bed, so there was nothing else we could do. Bonnie spent the nights happily in our room snug with us ... We kept the kitchen range chugging away all night both nights so the place was warm, it also warms the cubby so at least Beesa was warm.
There was very little damage done really, and away from our place you'd never know there had been a storm, the odd branch down here n there... thats all. The news showed the coastal areas had been hit quite bad, and the sea had 10 metre high waves.... wow...
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