Most of last nights post was written five years ago as we received news from another family who had to spend 7 days in the Cottage without water because of a hole in the pipe from the well to the Cottage.

This year we spent the best part of two weeks in the Cottage without water. Following two months without rain in June and July the well really had run dry. When Jim the pump man testing the depth, with a long length of rope with a spanner on the end, he reported there was only 10 foot of muddy water down there when it should be at least 50.

A good two weeks of rain was needed to sort it all out. Although it did rain whilst we were there it was mostly soft low cloud and it it rarely came down hard enough to fill anything.

In the meantime there was no running water, no showers and no flushing.

Buckets of sea water were brought in for flushing purposes and we made use of the tap on the pier for anything else. There wasn’t much washing done and we relied on the fresh air and the sea,

Halfway through the two weeks I tried to give myself a clean in the orchard. I had two large bottles of water that had been warming in the sun. I took my glasses off and having positioned myself well out of sight of the road I stripped off and sluiced myself down with soap and the warm water. Halfway through the process I realised that whilst I was out of sight of the road I was in full view of anyone who might have been walking back down the pier. Fortunately with my glasses off there was no easy way to tell if anyone was there so I carried on.

Towards the end of the two weeks Jim rigged up a temporary solution to try replenish the well by connecting a blue hose to a  cattle trough somewhere up the hill behind the orchard.

It worked!