A POOL WITH A DARK SECRET

This pool looks like an ordinary rectangular swimming pool much in need of a spring clean for the summer. It is that, but it is built down a impossibly steep ravine. In order to build it, building supplies had to be flown in by helicopter. It went on for weeks. The owner threw a pool party once it was finished and while getting down there was an experience, getting back up was an Everest-like effort. Gasp!

Since that time steps have been built, even a little road, more for carts than cars, a fountain added and in high summer it is decked with flowers. It is still a long way back up yet I see the owner's 86-year-old mother down there tending plants. More things appear, bit by bit: a changing room, a platform for table tennis, screening hedges not seen here,
an outdoor grill, etc. There are pool parties in the summer with a sound system turned up full blast. We hear only a distant thump-thump but people who live closer to the pool are not exactly thrilled with the racket.

The secret? Completely invisible from the road and built under the pool, in part, and just out from a bank, is a new dwelling. I only heard about it yesterday. This could account for cars with foreign license plates parked above from time to time, and bare bodies sprawled out beside the pool. I couldn't say, but it might just be illegal. :-) From the knowing looks, shrugs and gestures by neighbours -- well, who is to say? Not I.

I snapped this on the way to the garden centre where I took this picture of one of the tunnels packed with plants ready to adorn terraces and window boxes for miles around.
Garden centre