Nuwara Elia Plantations

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My arm has improved a little and today I can now lift it up to breast height without out excessive pain so I am feeling more positive about it. Still, a shame I could not ride to the Mackwoods Tea Museum and tea factory just a mere 15k down the valley. The journey was really incredible with the tea bushes in neat rows set across the hillside with many women plucking the leaves and putting them into large sacks on their backs. The top three fresh leaves are harvested every 10 days by about 6 women per acre of ground. The factory employs 600 women, who pick throughout the year, and many men who do the weighing, spraying, pruning and the grubbing up and replanting, which is done every 50 years. We saw the processes being performed in the factory, withering, rolling and cutting, fermenting, drying and grading. The batches are tasted and packed ready for market at auction. We saw an old rolling machine outside, which was made by Marshall of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, who also made farm equipment, such as threshing machines and ploughs and ploughing engines and incidentally the 1945 Series I Tractor we have at home. Of course we could not leave without visiting their tea shop, where we had tea and cake before the ascent up the hairpin bends to Nuwara Elia for lunch in the park. This area must be good for vegetable growing since the roadside was littered with vegetable stalls and the odd plant stall. Some riders took off on their bikes to explore the roads, whilst others mooched around town to see the markets, the two ladies begging and the general hubbub of activity, especially around the busy, large bus station. The sun is going down and our backup drivers are shivering, not being used to the cooler climate. We think it is great and would love days like this in the UK.

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