How to build a carpark!

And so the landscaping continues.  This time on a larger scale with machinery and a professional!  Now that we have bought part of the field nextdoor, we have room to park the cars on our own land (up until now they have been on a little slope at the side of the track).  So Bob's brother-in-law, Chris, came over on Saturday to get on with it.  He does groundworks and landscaping for a living and is just much better than us at knowing what needs moving where to make a flat bit, etc.  This was all decided at quite short notice, but we arranged to borrow a neighbour's digger and sorted out a delivery of stone from our quarry.  Chris was impressed that we could sort that out so quickly and for a Saturday morning too.  Bob and I had an afternoon in the week cutting down hedge and clearing back overhanging branches and marking out and measuring so we were ready to go.

On Saturday morning Chris arrived at about the same time as the neighbour, Dave, with his digger.  Dave gave Chris a run through of all the little quirks of his digger, like that all the controls are the opposite way round to a normal digger.  I could see Chris looking more and more dubious as he went on and when Dave left saying to give him a ring if the tracks came off, Chris looked even more troubled.  Well, within two minutes one of the tracks had come off and that was that.  A quick discussion led to the decision to try and hire a digger as we'd get nowhere fast if we had to keep putting the tracks back on.  Bless him, it was really kind of Dave to lend it to us, but because the first bit was on quite rough ground, it just wouldn't have worked and so he came and took it back again.  Bearing in mind that it was now about 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning, I think we did quite well to get a digger delivered.  We do know the people from the hire shop quite well and have always got on well with them, so that probably helped.  Bob always gets me to do the ringing for these things because he thinks I can get away with being cheeky!  So, the digger arrived at about 11.30 and by the time we'd had a cuppa and a chat with the driver (having just had a cuppa and a chat with the lad who delivered the stone), it wasn't worth starting anything before lunch!  I'd forgotten how much time you spend socialising when you're having deliveries.

The hired digger suited Chris very well and he soon got
on with spreading out all the hardcore we'd accumulated to
help fill in the dip along the hedge.

There we are, he is happy in his work.

I had a go at a bit of bucket work - takes a lot of thinking about
you know.  I'm sure it'd soon become second nature and
you'd do it without thinking about it, but not in the 10 minute
session I had!

None of us had thought about a membrane to put between the soil
and stone so we had a hunt round and found enough roof breather
membrane, hessian, old tarpaulins and builders bags to lay out (having
stabbed them with a garden fork to allow drainage).  By the end of Saturday
the site was cleared and we'd laid some of the membranes and spread some
of the stone.

I was working and Bob was out on Sunday, so we left Chris to it
and he finished spreading, levelling and compacting the stone
and started on the path down from the workshop.  This will be
how Bob gets his motorbikes up and down eventually, but we
ran out of stone.

We can now park side by side and reverse in.  Our visitors should
be pleased about that, it's surprising how many people ask us to
reverse their cars out!  Behind the cars we will store the trailer and
also build another log store.  It all looks a bit new and harsh just now,
but once we've sorted the edges out and the stone has mellowed a
bit it should look fine.  We will also lay the hedge to thicken it up so
it should be more hidden from the track.