Lord Ashdown figures he has found the new property hot spot — and is selling one holiday home to buy another, reports John Arlidge of The Sunday Times
It is not every day you see a former Royal Marine, a former leader of a British political party and a member of the House of Lords stroll out of his house at 7am sporting nothing but a pair of faded beige swimming trunks and a broad grin. Stranger yet, he is being pursued by three heavily armed men. But, for Lord (Paddy) Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, former LibDem leader and the international community’s representative in Bosnia, this is a morning ritual he calls “pure heaven”.
Ashdown strides across the lawn to the bottom of his garden, carving a dark streak in the dew. He climbs on to the roof of the boathouse. Without hesitating — once a marine, always a marine — he dives 20ft, down through the smudgy mist that covers Lake Jablanica. The armed men, his bodyguards, look on anxiously as he swims through the gloom to the opposite bank before front-crawling back. Shivering, he climbs out, picks plums, pears and apricots from his orchard and then settles down to breakfast on his giant outdoor dining table. “This is wonderful,” he sighs, “and it’s the thing I’m going to miss the most. It’s heartbreaking to leave.”
Ashdown, 64, is leaving a house and a country he has grown to love. He has been the Peace Implementation Council’s high representative in Bosnia since 2002, the man charged with enforcing the Dayton peace agreement in the war-ravaged former Yugoslav republic. His posting, however, ends in January. After a round of farewell parties, he will sell his home and swap his £100,000 armoured Audi limousine (with armed outriders) for his wife Jane’s battered silver-blue Fiat Punto. The couple will pack their belongings and drive back to their farmhouse near Yeovil in Somerset.
Ashdown bought his lakeside home three years ago as a weekend retreat. During the week he lives in a small Ottoman house in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. To him, the lakeside house is more than just a home; it holds some of his fondest memories. “This is where my grandchildren, Matthias and Lois, learned to swim, where friends have come to stay and where I’ve taken tough decisions that I hope in time will be seen to have given Bosnia the stable, prosperous future it deserves.”
As he munches fruit at the table where prime ministers and presidents of Bosnia-Herzegovina have sat — along with Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, and the actor John Cleese — Ashdown recalls the day that he and Jane first saw the house and decided to buy it on sight. “We wanted to buy a house near Sarajevo, so we went down the Croatian coast, which is what everybody does. But we were stunned by the prices. We could not afford anything. We were driving back to Sarajevo a bit depressed and came along the side of this lake, and we both said almost at the same time, ‘Why don’t we buy here? We much prefer the mountains to the coast.’”
The next day the couple rented a boat to tour the lake and found a grey-brick shell for sale. It had been built by Kadir Jusic, a general in the Bosnian army whom Ashdown knew by reputation. During Yugoslavia’s civil war, Ashdown visited Bosnia regularly in his capacity as leader of the Liberal Democrats. On one trip, he bet the then Bosnian prime minister a bottle of wine that Bosnian troops could not take the top of a high mountain occupied by Serbian forces. Jusic not only pulled off the operation but did it in a snowstorm. “That was one bet I enjoyed losing,” Ashdown recalls.
The Ashdowns paid £30,000 for the shell. They then hired local woodworkers to create solid beech floors for the house and to build its doors and furniture from local cherrywood. “Almost everything in the house has been made here in Bosnia. They are wonderful with wood,” Ashdown says. “Our builder was called Hajduk — which is the local word for a bandit. My builder was Mr Bandit, which seems to be a pretty appropriate name for builders everywhere.” Mr Bandit was paid about £70,000 for his work on the property.
The house now has five bedrooms, a large kitchen and a study, which is decorated with copies of cartoons from local newspapers depicting Ashdown as Superman repairing the iconic Old Bridge at Mostar, destroyed by Croats in 1993. The home’s most unusual feature is the attic. Up a narrow flight of stairs are two long, dormitory-style rooms bristling with walkie-talkies, bulletproof vests and emergency evacuation plans. “I have to share my house with the security guys, who are all British soldiers,” Ashdown says. “Children would love to use this attic. What fun to play soldiers in a place where real soldiers worked!”
In spite of the constant security presence, Ashdown says the house is the one place where he has been able to escape the pressure of his job — which demands his attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week — of trying to reunite a country the size of Wales in which an estimated 250,000 people were killed between 1992 and 1995.
“Early mornings and evenings on the lake are best,” says Ashdown. “In the mornings I swim, but at night we get the boat out and potter off to Lisicica, the village on the opposite bank. We go to Kod Halime restaurant, where we eat pita burek, a Bosnian pie with lamb. And, stern Muslim village though it is, we always end the meal with a bottle of slivovica, homemade plum brandy.”
Ashdown also enjoys walking in the mountains, where, he says, “it is possible to touch the past. You go up to these high mountain villages and you find people living as they lived 100 years ago. Every village has its own cheese, every village has its own dance. You find people in national costume, not because they have put it on for the tourists but because that is what they wear.”
Although he is sad to leave, Ashdown is looking forward to taking some time off. “I have found my emotions wrenched about in this place more than in any other job. Nothing prepares you for the sight of a mass grave, the decomposing bodies piled up with the pathetic remnants of people’s lives — wallets full of pictures of happy families eating around the dinner table.”
He is looking forward to working in his little cottage garden in Somerset, taking his dogs for a walk on Sunday mornings and having a few pints in the pub at lunchtime. The posting in Bosnia is his last big job, he insists. “I need to give my family some time. They have been very good to me. I want to spend some time with my kids and my grandchildren.”
But Ashdown is not leaving Bosnia for good. With the cash from his lakeside house, on the market for €200,000 (£135,000), he plans to buy a chalet in the skiing resort of Mount Bjelasnica — “the white one” — where many of 1984 Winter Olympic skiing events were held. He is a fanatical skier — several of his bodyguards have broken limbs trying to keep up with him. “We want to get a chalet up there. It is very cheap. Bosnia is where Croatia was a few years ago, and by getting in now we have a chance to catch the early part of the curve.”
He may have the confidence to invest here, but others might balk so soon after such a devastating war. As one local resident observes coolly: “The worst act of genocide on European soil since the second world war hardly encourages investors.” Ashdown concedes that when people think of Bosnia, “their minds are locked in to that grainy television footage of the siege of Sarajevo from the mid-1990s”. But he insists: “The future of this place is no longer conflict. It will not happen.”
Bosnia-Herzegovina’s high representative still has two months to help secure a stable future for the country and put it on the path of full European integration. With breakfast over, Ashdown leaps up from the table. “I’m terribly sorry,” he says, stretching out his hand. “But I’ve got to see the prime minister now.”
Lord Ashdown’s house is for sale with Bosnia & Herzegovina Property, 01202 259 155, www.bosnia-herzegovina-property.com
For sale
This 2,000sq ft, one-bed house, in a third of an acre of garden, is six miles from Sarajevo city centre. It is £27,000 with Prodaja Nekretnina, 00 38 162 209 776, www.prodaja-nekretnina.com
Half a mile from the Kupres ski slopes, 60 two-bed houses are available off-plan, from £23,500, with Bosnia & Herzegovina Property, 01202 259 155, www.bosnia-herzegovina-property.com