Holiday Makers flock to new Leisure Resort in Chingola!

The Carlisle Hotel in Chingola, Zambia, recently opened it's doors to guests again after extensive refurbishment to the pool area.

Last year a major refurbishment programme was undertaken which included the addition of a new honeymoon suite.

"We've been coming here for a number of years now", said Mr Rex Carlisle, (yes! same name as the hotel!) "we find it a really relaxing place!"

Fellow guest Mrs Prue Carlisle commented "The food is excellent!"

When asked which room they were staying in they told our reporter that they were in the 'Honeymoon Suite' and both said they found it extremely comfortable.

"The nicest aspect is the double door opening onto a private courtyard" said Mr Carlisle.

Mrs Carlisle added "We can make our way straight out to the delightful new pool and jump straight onto the floating lilos, it's great!"

Mr & Mrs Carlisle having fun on the floating lilos

"Was it....Colonel Mustard, in the Library....with the Candlestick?"

No..........................wrong! It wasn't Colonel Mustard.....it was Justin & Linzi!
It was the Library....correct ! But it wasn't the Candlestick, it was a bottle of wine!


Our Library is finally finished and we're soooo chuffed with it! At last! Somewhere to put all our books, movies and stuff! So we've been hanging out in the Library of late and filling shelves as we sipped on chilled wine to keep us going!

"Bubble, are you there?"

"Bubble? We're getting into the pool now darling. Literally, as we speak, our feet are entering the pool! We've got the bolly stolly darling and we're going in.......!"

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Vegas Wedding!

A quick snippet here! My cousin Stef is getting married in Vegas next Tuesday! (5th September) She's marrying Darren. My Mum & Dad are going out there together with Peter & Margaret (Stef's Mum & Dad) & Andrew & Zoe (brother & fiancee).
So, wishing Stef all the best for a great day! Wishing everyone a great trip!
Apparently it'll be live online but I don't have any details............
Stef, if you send me a photo of the wedding I'll post it on here for you!

Our little piece of paradise!

Here's the latest pool photo and things are definitely looking better! The water's crystal clear, we're slowly getting grass around the pool, we've re-done all the rockeries and, as I type, Collins the new garden boy, is, under strict supervision from Patrick, vacuuming up the last 'dirties' in the bottom of the pool!
So we're all set for Saturday afternoon! Got the champagne chilling.................in we'll go, hand in hand, clutching the 'bolly' and two flutes...............and we shall then declare the pool officially christened!

"Blogging or Bragging?"

It's a good question isn't it? Are we bloggers just sad people who feel a need to express themselves in cyberspace to unknown hordes (hordes? who am I kidding!) of people? Or are we just complete show-offs?!!
Well....................................in this instant I must confess to a teensy bit of showing off......or maybe we could call it "self-appreciation of my artistic abilities"...........
Ok, enough of the rambling on, what I'm getting round to is that we've just fitted our new bathroom door which was completely hand-carved by a man called Chris. Sadly Chris isn't very well, like, REALLY not well, so he struggles to do work at all. (we're trying to rectify this with ARVs) The door has probably taken him about nine months or more to complete, using ideas from a photograph we took of a door at Timamoon. Have I mentioned Timamoon before? One of the most beautiful, romantic & creative places to stay in South Africa http://timamoon.co.za

So, Chris made this amazing door which is totally cool, funky & arty and .............. I made the handle! whooooo! go Linzi!
Well, yes, I'm pretty chuffed with my handle! I made it from thick rope threaded with hollowed out bits of bamboo and then I threaded beads and seed pods onto the copper wire I used to tie it with and also onto the frayed rope ends!

the handle!
the door!

So, there you have it, a fantastic door, we just need to re-do the whole bathroom now....................

Anyone for a swim??!!!

"Come on in the water's lovely!"

Hmmmm, well, after three and a half days of filling we're there......................only problem, we appear to have accidentally filled our pool with dark green sludge with a delicate hint of brown.....................lovely!!!!! But hey! It was still lovely to get in the pool again, refreshing, invigorating, we had a great swim! Come and join us! Ok, we're kidding.......the shock packs are in and we wait for clarity.....................watch this space!

The Last Day

Well, here it is! Wednesday 23rd August! The plastering was finished by about 2pm! We started filling straightaway! (It's Thursday 10.30am at this moment and the water's only just lapping against the shallow end wall!) We hope the pool will be filled by tomorrow night although the water will be quite dirty and we'll then have to treat it. The colour should actually be fine as it's already slightly darker when it's wet and has a nice look to it! Can't wait for a swim!!!!! We're now busy filling in around the remaining areas, above the piping, with red laterite, black soil and finally grass. So the next photo I post on here should show a sparkling clear pool with everything looking much tidier all around it!

Welcome back Gordon!

Before work began on the pool we traced our original 'Gordon the gecko' on massive, sellotaped together, pieces of paper! Thus, when the time came, the 'paper Gordon' was positioned in the new pool and a team of us traced his shape with chalk! Omari and his guys then sprang into action on day 17 of the job (which was actually Tuesday 22nd Aaugust!), mixed plaster, tinted it and produced a perfect Gordon for us!


The next day, Wednesday 23rd August, was D-Day! They guys started at 7am, mixing the plaster in the deep end of the pool and tinting it. We used pva paint for the tint, mixed with white cement and marble dust. We had a little difficulty selecting the colour as we actually didn't know we were going to need pva paint for tinting until the night before we did Gordon! So we had a last minute panic rush job, frantically trying to decide on the colours which would give an end result of "light grey rock colour....................with Gordon slightly darker............." Hmmm....tricky! Honestly? We probably didn't get it quite right because Gordon's definitely 'feeling a bit blue' and, as you'll see in the next posting, the rest of the pool is quite light, although definitely grey.

Happy Birthday Gaz!

It's my brother Gary's birthday today, 42!
Last night he & Kathryn (his fiancee) went out to dinner with Mum & Dad in Ma & Pa's new silver Toyota Rav4! Oooooeeee! Mum & dad are getting rather cool in their old age!!
Hope they had a nice time anyway!
Gary & Kathryn are actually getting married next year, 2007, on July 28th at Eilean Donan Castle on the beautiful Isle of Skye!
So, here's my little experiment..............sharp-eyed readers of my blog may have noticed the adverts at the top of the page..............they tend to be travel ads for Zambia due to my constant ramblings about our trips in Africa.
Suddenly they became a veritable feast of swimming pool construction ads - wonder why?!
So now, in one posting, I've mentioned: birthdays, the Toyota Rav 4, weddings and Eilean Donan Castle - wonder what turn the ads will take.....? It will be interesting to see.........................
Maybe I should just start blogging about the most odd things I can think about (shouldn't be hard I know!) just for the fun of seeing which ads come up!
Well at least if I start ranting about odd stuff at some point you'll know why!

Patience is a virtue................

Yeah well, we're not that virtuous and we started to get impatient after about a week!

So anyway, we decided to try and get some grass laid. The bottom photo shows Fred putting black soil down and the top photo shows Patrick (left) and Fred finishing one whole section of grass! (nicked from the front verge - we'll worry about what to do with the verge later!)

They did this from Wednesday 16th to Friday 18th August.

Hard to believe there were pool steps and the old pool right where they're standing only two and a half weeks ago!

So now we await the final stage..............................................!

Day 14....then.....nothing............!!!

At this point we've got the old pool walls bashed away at the top and red laterite filled in between the old pool walls and the new pool walls. The pool guys then pretty much did a 'disappearing act' as they're waiting for 'the boss' to come from lusaka with the white cement for the finishing. This was Tuesday 8th August.

Fast forward to day 12, Sat. 5th Aug.

Day 12

Day 13 (Mon. 7th Aug.)

Pool fever! The latest!

Day 9

(view from deep end, new steps will be where wheelbarrow is)

Day 9

Satchel inspects the day's progress from the shallow end!

Day 8

Base slab laid

Latest pool progress Day 8 - 1st August!

Day 8 early morning

(preparing the mix for laying slab in the bottom of the pool)


Day 7

Our new swimming pool!

Day 5

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2

Day 1 (above)
We finally went ahead and started work on our new pool this week!
Our original pool was a 1950s monster and we really wanted something smaller, of a more natural shape and warmer!
So, for all of you out there who have a major interest in the building of swimming pools.......(which might not be many of you!).....I've decided to post photos of the progress!
Well I think it's interesting anyway!

Wild dog spotted!

A wild dog was recently spotted in the undergrowth in a Chingola garden. She was behaving in a very fierce and frightening manner. This is the first recorded 'Wild Dog' sighting for years and could be very exciting for future wild animal viewing trips to the Copperbelt!

***stop press***

Hopes of millions of wild dog fans were dashed just before this went to press when local woman, Linzi Carlisle, came forward and informed us that the 'wild dog' in question was, in fact, "My cute, sweet, little pet dog Talitha!" she went on to say "She wouldn't hurt a fly! She just gets a teensy bit agitated when anyone goes near where she's hidden one of her bones!"

Photos of Rex's 70th

Rex is pleased with his surprise!

Say "cheese"!

The magnificent man in his flying machine!

Lunch at the Westcliff!

Justin's Dad's 70th!

'Tis the time for turning 70 it appears..................Justin's Dad, Rex, also turned 70 on April 24th but we couldn't actually get down to South Africa right then.
We flew down on Sunday 7th May and stayed at The Melrose Arch Hotel (www.africanpridehotels.com/melrosearch) where we stayed on Justin's 40th. We decided to treat ourselves to three nights there as it's so cool! (plus I got a great rate through my prokard -
www.prokard.co.za - worth getting and paying R300 for if you want even one night there plus you get discounts at loads of protea hotels and with Budget car rental!
So, on the Monday we picked up Rex & Prue and took Rex on a little magical mystery tour!
All he knew was that we were going to Rand Airport so he was pretty nonplussed!
Justin had arranged for Rex to be taken up in an old Boeing Stearman Biplane and he was absolutely thrilled when we told him! (Prue was actually a bit fed-up that she wasn't going too!)
He had a de-briefing, was kitted out in flight overalls, biggles helmet, the whole toot and up he went!!!
He had a great time, flew the plane himself a bit and experienced some 'mid-air acrobatics', all of which he thoroughly enjoyed!
After all the excitement we moved on to the Westcliff Hotel for a 'posh lunch'! www.westcliff.co.za
They have fantastic views from La Belle Terrasse!
So, it was a great success and we met up again the next day for lunch at Hyde Park before Justin & I headed off to The Drakensberg Mountains and Rex & Prue headed off to Plettenburg Bay!
We stayed in Gallery Suite at Acorn Cottages in the central 'berg area www.acornsinchampagne.co.za for just four nights and we had an excellent little holiday!
The view from our verandah was amazing, the weather was beautiful during the day and we went on two really long hikes. It got freezing as soon as the sun went down so we had to have strict planning in place: Get back from hike, light braai, shower, put on all warm clothes including thermals, light fire inside, eat on verandah, go inside as sun drops, close doors and sit as close to fire as possible! It was lovely and cosy and we just really enjoyed ourselves.
In addition we visited Baz, Justin's great friend who owns Thokozisa and went round for dinner to his & Tracy's house where we had a great evening!
We felt as if we'd been away a lot longer than we actually were - that's the amazing power of the 'berg - or any mountain I suppose.
We ended up at The Indaba Hotel for our last night in Jo'burg itself - near Fourways Mall - for last minute shopping - www.indabahotel.co.za - we find it a very handy hotel for the Fourways area and although it's large and geared for conferences it's very efficient on the whole, food's good, rooms are pretty nice - we had a room with a verandah by the dam and the grounds are large so you can really have a wander around.
We spent our last night at the airport at Southern Sun Garden Court (the old Holiday Inn Garden Court) and flew back home on Tuesday 16th May to our babies!