Two birds with one stone

Or one hole with a load of stones...
We have had a big pile of rubble on the lawn since the door was knocked through between the main house and the room a currently live in. Three years ago perhaps. As we also had a big hole at the side of the drive to be filled in it seemed that we could solve both these problems at once.
The dry weather means it is a good time to take the mini digger on the lawn. We are not skiing so much during the school holidays

Just starting to be filled in

Big pile of rubble

Putting it in the trailer

Big bare patch on lawn. Now we need to do something about that! (before we plant seed we need to get it up to the approx same level as the rest of the grass, some earth got dug off with the rubble)

Drive drive drive

Work on the drive has been going on for some weeks (months). We recently had another very heavy rainfall and work so far successfully stopped further damage, which is GREAT.

This isn't actually the drive but the edge of the lawn got mowed in the same push to try to bring the sides of the drive under control so that weeds etc don't block the drain.

This doesn't look bad, but there is a lot of water flowing down this wheel ruts. There will soon be another drain to stop this flowing so far - the further it goes the faster it gets, plus it picks up more water on the way. You can see the ditch is doing a great job of taking away run-off from the roof - it has just been dug out.

This is the first drain and you can see it is almost overflowing. The soon-to-be new one mentioned above will help with this.

Still a lot of work to do...

Slave gang on the drive

A few weeks ago several extreme rain storms caused a lot of damage to the drive. It has been slowly getting a bit bumpy, but this was the final straw for it.
Doug has been slaving away to get it back in to a decent state as it is a DISASTER if it falls down the hill - we won't be able to get home!
First up was digging out the ditch, then putting in a drain before the corner. He is now busy putting several tonnes of gravel in the wheel ruts where it had been washed away, after that he will put further drains down the main part of the drive.
It is a LOT of work.

Beeeaauutiful ditch

Painting the drains with hammerite

First drain in before the corner draining in to the lovely ditch

New gravel, this is just a tiny tiny fraction of what has gone down