The Enchanted Forest is no more

The Enchanted Forest is no more - well, it's now just a few overgrown trees with a slightly mysterious shade underneath.  Now it is no longer be possible to hide in the undergrowth which gave this blog its name (see the very first entry last year). I've been putting off the moment for a long time, but this week it was time to do the driveway, together with cutting a gap in the low stone wall and installation of a dropped kerb.  I have been gradually cutting things back in a surreptitious way, but now the public can suddenly see a spacious garden where previously (for over twenty years) they had only seen overgrown shrubs and trees, with lots of ivy and litter.

I had engaged a contractor to clear this overgrown stuff (old photo, left) - especially as it contained lots of brambles which I hate as they seem to hate me first.  However, the contractor failed to appear on Saturday morning, with some excuse about not usually working Saturdays, despite this being the agreement only a week previously; more likely they had too much alcohol on Friday night.  With work on the driveway due to start on Monday I reverted to Plan B and did it myself, thus saving a good deal of money.  However, although successful, I was totally shackered (shattered and knackered) by the end of the day.  The result is a huge clear area (as seen in the top photo) where there used to be hawthorn, brambles, yew and a proliferation of some unidentified shrub, although there were a few bits left which I intended to do on Monday while Colin, my driveway contractor, was doing the dropped kerb.

On Monday I arrived at the house at 8.00am to find that there was already a huge pile of yew branches on the lawn as Colin had already started, having arrived at 7.15 with his own digger and dump truck.  Colin is an absolute whiz on his digger and Ryan, his mate, drives the neat little articulated dump truck.  On one occasion while Colin was scraping the natural layer, I saw a nice looking bit of limestone uncovered and just pointed to it; Colin casually picked it up with the shovel, placed it at my feet and carried on scraping.  Neat.  Part of our contract was the removal of all the plaster, hardcore, slate etc which had accumulated around the site in untidy piles, either loose, bags or plastic tubs.  By the end of the day there was a clear excavation for the driveway (down to the natural brash) and a huge pile of debris near the gateway, as well as a large pile of shrubbery on the lawn.

My contribution was the removal of a 4 metre section of the low front wall, which felt almost a crime as it was probably 180 years old.  (NB That's Colin not me in the photo, with Ryan in the background.)

I arrived on Tuesday to find the huge pile was a lot smaller as the grabber lorry had already visited and removed about 16 tons of it.  I was doing some bathroom tiling later when he returned for the rest and was so quick that I almost missed him.  TOP TIP - if you have more than two or more skips of hardcore for landfill, consider using a grabber lorry which has a capacity of 18 tons, is much easier than filling skips and costs only £150.

By the end of the day the new kerbs and the granite setts were in place, ready for tarmac, and the drive excavation was ready for the ballast.  After the removal of Mount Etna I felt guilty about the greenery on the (shared) lawn, so I moved it all to the back of the house for burning somewhen.  Home for a shower and beer.

Wednesday saw the laying of the hot tarmac, as well as the return of the grabber with 18 tons of ballast.  He also then took away the smaller version of Mount Etna comprising the old tarmac from the pavement plus more hardcore which had been found around the garden.  It turned out that the driver/operator was Ryan's Dad - I do like working in a fairly small place where people know each other.

All that was left to do was for me to point the setts with cement and building sand. It's been a good week already!  We'll revisit the driveway in the autumn when the other trees will be felled and the layout will be revised in the light of experience; then we'll put in the edgings and add the top layer of gravel; at some time I will also have to rebuild the wall ends with my nice bits of coping.  This is the result so far, with our car (just visible) parked on our driveway for the first time (what a pleasure after over seven months of finding a legal parking space every day!):