One thing we cannot accuse the Italian builders of is not making hay while the sun shines. When the weather is set fair they pitch up at 7am as soon as the first light appears in the sky.
As you can imagine therefore, it was a fairly rude awakening when this lot started going up in the early hours. But go up it did and with ruthless efficiency and meticulous attention to detail. It forms the framework for the new extension’s corner support pillars and roof. After which the walls will be accommodated.
Perhaps a slightly disappointing aspect to this is that once the concrete is poured for the roof, it will be at least a week to ten days before the next phase of building can go up as the concrete needs time to set.
Later in the day, against slightly more leaden skies than we’d been used to recently, the lorry bearing the concrete showed up outside. Looking like the leg of a tripod from the War of the Worlds, the huge arm was extended over the top of the trulli, and the pouring of the roof began.
The end result is what you see here and that was the end of proceedings as far as the extension was concerned for now. At least a 10 day wait is now on the cards before any further work can go into the extension block to make sure that the concrete sets properly before work begins on the walls.
The phrase ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ springs to mind here. Because in the absence of anything constructive to do on the building front, there emerged the opportunity to do a bit of exploring. As the evening drew in, the skies cleared again and a trip to Locorotondo beckoned. This is a bar that sits on the edge of the town overlooking the Itrian valley. Even in the third week of October in this fantastic part of the world you can still get days like this where the sky is a deep blue and it is as warm as toast sat outside with a cold Peroni. And that’s exactly what I did.