Lessons in the park

With a break in the British summer, and no rain forecast until one o'clock, we headed to Stanmer Park for the second fitting of our first guest yurt's roof cover.

Which is easier written than done.

To add a little difficulty, this was the first time we were putting up a yurt with no assistance from Professional Yurt People (my capitals). And we were hung over after dinner with our French teacher.

Our first lesson was that we should have paid more attention to how the trellis wall sections fit together. It looks so easy when someone else does it. After several frustrating attempts (with the rain fast approaching and the cover needing to be on), we learnt that the first time we put the entire trellis together successfully, it's always upside down.

Needful to say, getting this far...



took ages.

Professional Yurt People will see that it's not perfect. But it's not too far off.

Next,we learnt that it will be far easier to raise the roof wheel after we've invented a Special Pole-y Thing. I know the Mongolians have already done this, and use bagana in their gers, but we don't want these fixtures in the middle of the space.

Anyway, we made it to this point...



Through this one fairly easily...



and then learnt not to put the cover on into a strong, storm-threatening wind. Seems obvious, especially to a former windsurfer, but that's the way the cover was folded and the whole point was to put it on to see if it fits.

Turning down another opportunity to give up and try again another day, we used the wind (and a hastily constructed Long Pole-y Thing) and...



Voila!

All it needs is a minor alteration round the roof wheel and it's done.

Go Clare. (I didn't tell you that she's making all the yurt covers in our lounge, saving us roughly £18,000 in the process - but I will.)

The final lesson was one we have had many times before, both here and overseas. Don't trust the weather people. It didn't rain all day.