Month: March 2022

Well, nearly. With my planned trip to the UK drawing closer every day I needed to fence in the other (south) side of my land, not so much for security but to stop the wild animals coming on while I’m away. I’ve only got two small fruit trees planted and the deer have already had a nibble at the bark of each one and if I didn’t do anything I’m sure that I’d return to find them severely damaged or perhaps eaten down to the ground.

I can’t put all of the fence on that side into place permanently however. The main reason is that there’s a large gap in the middle to allow the builder room to work and a bit further down the two gateposts that have been put in both have to come out again as they’re as bent as a fiddler’s elbow and it would be futile trying to fit a gate between them. So although I could fit the three tensioning wires to support the fence mesh in the bays in the bottom section, I could only make the supports temporary further up, just enough really to deter the deer from finding their way over.

I’ve got more fixing to do tomorrow but I managed to get all the mesh that I wanted to hanging on the posts, and don’t I know it because it was a long, very hot afternoon’s work and I’m now feeling it a bit. However, as the photos show, it was worth it.

I haven’t cut the mesh so when I leave I’ll carry on unrolling it and hang it right up to the last post that’s there. I need to leave the gap there for now as it’s the only way that I can get my car down to the caravan but when I leave I’ll fill it to prevent any vehicle being driven down there. Not that I think anyone will want to, on foot even let alone in a vehicle.

For now anyway! After retrieving my pair of outdoor tables from my ex-neighbour, Chantal’s, garden yesterday I only needed to bring my plant pots over from Victor and Madeleine’s garden, where they’ve been kept safe since last June, in order to be self-contained again. It was another beautiful day today so ideal to get the job done.

To be honest, I wasn’t much looking forward to it because two long tubs and two tall planters are made out of fine concrete and are very heavy and when I moved them from Plazac, I had some help getting them onto my small trailer. This time around I had to do it by myself but I managed it and now all of my pots are secure in the small space behind my caravan and ready to be used again, which I’m thinking of doing when I return from my impending trip back to the UK. More on that later.

Last but not least was my little white statue of Venus rising from the waves which became quite a local landmark at Plazac because it was how all of the delivery drivers found my old house. For now she has pride of place standing at the corner of my ‘tonnelle’.

She won’t always be there though. Eventually she will be restored and repainted and given a new position outside my new house where probably she will become as equally well-know as before. But that will be much later when the house has been completed and there will be no chance of her being damaged because she has survived the long journey from the UK to Plazac and now to Fleurac in one piece and that’s how I want her to stay 😉

I cut the grass yesterday for the first time this year, not all of it of course, just the area below the ‘building site’. It was a perfect day for it and I confess that for the first part of the afternoon I sat out and enjoyed the warm sunshine before starting on the grass later on and finishing in the early evening. Today was another glorious spring day and this was the sight that greeted me when I looked up towards the house-build from my caravan.

Nothing more has happened on-site this week since Monday, I guess because the builder has been preparing for a big leap forward next week putting in the beams that will support the house and moving towards completing the main concrete base slab. Here are some shots taken with one of my drones (my Hubsan Zino) that show the build progress to date and how the rest of the land is now looking after the winter, now that the grass has been cut.

Before moving on, I can’t resist showing this gorgeous shot of the bottom of my land and the lovely little valley beyond. That area is classed as solely agricultural and one of the reasons I went for this piece of land was because that view, which will be seen from my living room, kitchen and bedrooms 1 and 3, can never be taken away because of that. Not in my lifetime anyway.

Having cut the grass and just in case there will be a lot of building activity next week, I thought it would be a good idea to move my trailers away from the area behind my ‘abri’ to give the builders a bit more space and also prevent them possibly becoming trapped. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. My ex-neighbour, Chantal, is moving next week from the house next to my old one at Plazac to one in Rouffignac. Since I left she’s been looking after my two outdoor tables by keeping them safe in her garden and I therefore needed to transport them over to Fleurac before she moves.

Today was perfect for doing it so I started by going over to pick up the smaller of the two with my small trailer and measuring the larger one to make sure that it would fit into my larger trailer, bearing in mind that it’s missing a large part of its floor. I got both of them safely over to Fleurac and after giving them a good hose down to remove as much of the grime that built up on them both since they were put out last July, I placed the smaller one in the open area between my caravan and the ‘tonnelle’ and the larger one inside it for now.

The larger one will remain inside the ‘tonnelle’ until I get back from my proposed trip to the UK when I can advance my plans and erect the second ‘tonnelle’ that’s presently still in my ‘abri’. There’s no point having both of them out in the weather while I’m not around and in the meantime we’ll be able to use the wooden furniture as and when friends drop in for ‘aperos’ now the weather is becoming so nice.

Here’s where I ended up putting my trailers. An ideal spot really, not visible from the road so reasonably secure, and also not where they will be an eyesore.

All I now have to do is pick up my plant pots from Victor and Madeleine’s, which I’ll do maybe this weekend, or certainly before I leave for the UK. Then I’ll be fully self-contained again, apart from the stuff that’s in storage, of course. After that I’ll be able to put the rest of my plans in place to make my little piece of paradise even more organised than it is now and I’m looking forward to it 😉

The builders didn’t turn up today because I guess they’re allowing the columns that they set the last time they were on site to cure and gain strength. However, Thomas, their surveyor, did come on site and carefully checked the work that had been done, presumably to make absolutely sure that everything’s in exactly the right place and to the correct dimensions in advance of the next stage.

I also found out why my electrical supply failed. I’ve used the same two 50 metre extension leads that I did previously when I originally connected my caravan to my neighbour’s house but they came up just a few metres short. I’d therefore temporarily bridged the gap with a third which has 50 metres of smaller diameter cable wound on a spool. I’d only unwound a few metres and left the remainder on the spool and these two things together meant that the cable was becoming hot enough in use to trip the spool’s thermal breaker.

Although I’d checked this at the time and reset all of the breaker buttons on all three of the spools, even after I’d unwound the hot cable from the spool, its breaker still took several minutes to reset, so this was why I couldn’t get the system up and running again at the time. So it appears that EDF wasn’t at fault on this occasion, it was a technical failure in my cable that was responsible.

I made up another 20 metre extension with larger diameter cable today and all is now working as it should. I still have an electrical problem to sort out though. I hadn’t realised that I left the light on all day over the caravan’s sink and although when I did spot it after several hours it turned off OK, it wouldn’t turn back on again. So as well as trying to cut the grass tomorrow (Wednesday) I’ll have to buy and install a new small strip light. And I thought I’d have nothing to do living in my caravan once work started on my house 🙁

After the frenetic activity in the first half of last week it went quiet while the concrete that had been poured into the ground was allowed to cure, but unsurprisingly work resumed again this morning. I went up to the top first thing while checking my electrical connection (which failed last night and was still down this morning) and found that a large truck was already parked on the access road with the driver delivering construction materials.

I told him that there was nobody on site from the builder but he said not to worry as they’d be along quite soon and continued with the unloading. I’m now pretty sure that all of these guys know each other very well from their many previous contracts and know exactly what they should be doing. A short while later while I was driving up to the ‘poubelles’ (rubbish bins) to drop off some stuff left over from when I moved the caravan over the weekend the builder’s truck went past in the opposite direction and when I got back the two in the truck were helping the delivery driver with the unloading.

The delivery included cement, ballast for concrete, concrete blocks and some more of the hollow square blocks that the builders had brought themselves last week and once the delivery truck had gone they got started with the young labourer knocking up light concrete, initially by hand but later using the concrete mixer that they had brought with them. Today’s job was to create columns on the concrete that was poured into the anchoring foundations last week using the hollow blocks placed over the upright reinforcing rods filled with the concrete.

There was nothing for me to do and as I didn’t want to make myself a nuisance by looking over their shoulders I left taking any more pictures until after they’d gone at not long after 3.00 pm. But one mustn’t be judgmental – they started at 9.00 am and worked right through as far as I could see without stopping for lunch or any other major break, so I think they did pretty well. Here are a few shots of the site at the end of the afternoon.

Here are a couple of shots of columns showing how they were made, simply by stacking up several of the hollow blocks and filling them with concrete.

But there was more to it than that because the tops of the columns also had to be adjusted, presumably in order to form a level base for the beams that it’s my guess will be put in place later in the week. In the next shot you can see one such column and in the final shot how three in what will be the central spine of the house have all been adjusted in the same way.

I’m not privy to what will happen next – I don’t know if a retaining wall of blocks will be laid around the perimeter of the house before the beams are put in place but I suspect it will be. But I guarantee that nobody will be more interested than me 😀

Explain this if you will. My electricity went off at around 8.00 pm last night and I connected up my generator at about 6.00 am this morning which I had running until midday. I checked every half hour or so to see if my supply had been restored but to no avail and eventually popped over to check with my neighbour who said that she hadn’t suffered any power outage at all. This didn’t surprise me because relatively speaking, my connection was made from a box ‘up’ the road whereas hers comes from further ‘down’ so she could easily be connected via a different sector.

Nevertheless, I thought that it was about time that I ran a check on my connection, so I dug out an electric saw and plugged it into the unused, second socket that I fixed on the side of my electrical box up near the road. And it worked. This meant that electricity was obviously being delivered. So I checked the other socket to which my caravan was connected and that worked too, so no problem there.

I’ve had to use three extension leads to get down to the bottom of my land where the caravan now is all of which were used previously when I connected to my neighbour’s house when I first moved into my caravan and have been used since. Even so, I thought that it’d be a good idea to check each one in turn. So I did, and to cut a long story short, each one worked fine. So then I connected the caravan up to the third one, as it had been previously, and it worked.

So what’s going on? Was the power restored by EDF just by coincidence, moments before I decided to test my cables? Or alternatively, was a gremlin at work playing games with my electricity at my expense? I guess I’ll never know, but at least the experience has made me set up my generator on a fine day so it’ll be ready next time I need it, because you can bet that when that time comes, it’ll be pitch black and pouring with rain. That’s what I’m thinking anyway, and it’s helping me feel a bit better about things… 😕

My caravan has remained at the top (road end) of my land ever since last Autumn when I moved it up from the bottom in order to get as much protection as possible from the northerly winds from the trees up there during the Winter. I toyed with the idea of keeping it there during the construction of my house so as to be close to the water and electrical supplies but as soon as work started it became obvious that it would be far too close to the action.

It is already clear that parking my car on the access road that the builder has put in would not be an option because it then wouldn’t be wide enough for the site vehicles and machinery that need to be brought on site and parking it close to my caravan as I’ve been doing for the past months would not be ideal as the ground is already becoming very cut-up in that area and will become more so. And, of course, it is bound to become more noisy, dusty and dirty as work proceeds.

Another consideration is that I have two ‘tonnelles’ (gazebos) for which there is definitely not enough space up at the top and I’ll be needing them this summer to house outdoor furniture for when it becomes hot and sunny as it will do in the not too distant future. I couldn’t face another summer confined to a hot and stuffy caravan and it’ll be pleasant to have somewhere that’s cool to enjoy pleasant afternoons with friends and a few drinks and snacks.

I always had in mind that I’d be moving the caravan back down at some time but I didn’t realise that it would be this soon and that the ground over which I’d be moving it would be as disrupted as it is. When I built my ‘abris’ (garden tool store) up at the top end I’d carefully tried to work out as accurately as possible where to place it to allow the builder the amount of access they said they’d need and what angle to position it on to align it with the house and also allow me reverse my Kia up alongside it in order to hitch to the caravan and pull it out while missing the trees behind it.

So quite a lot to think about and I had no guarantee that things would work out until I actually did it – which I did by reversing the car and pulling the caravan out a few inches at a time. And luckily it all worked out, although I did worry for a few moments as the rear of the caravan swung round past the back corner of the ‘abris’.

I didn’t have a lot of room to work with and although fortunately the caravan remained on fairly flat ground the Kia’s 4-wheel drive and high ground-clearance came in handy as it had to climb up and over the short, steep bank on the opposite side of the access road.

At the moment there isn’t enough space to allow me to drive between the foundation work and my new fence posts down to the bottom of my land so I had to completely turn the caravan, take it up to the road, descend on the land neighbouring mine on the other side of my posts and then reenter between the last couple when I got to the bottom. It was lucky that I hadn’t got around yet to fixing the mesh in place down there!

It was then just a matter of jiggling the caravan backwards and forwards to get it into the position that I wanted, which was mor difficult than I expected it to be because of the limited visibility that I had and the closeness of the overhanging walnut tree.

But I finally did it and this was how things looked at the end of the Saturday. The job had taken me all day and by the time I’d cleaned the caravan’s interior and replaced everything that I’d transferred to the car or moved inside it, I have to say that I was totally whacked.

On Sunday morning Wim paid his usual morning visit for coffee and a chat this time accompanied by Jean-Pierre. And this time was even better than usual because later on Sophie and Sylvia, Jean-Pierre’s wife, also turned up which was great as it’s always nice to have visitors. It also gave me several more pairs of hands to help me shift the ‘tonnelle’ that was already there and after they’d left I was able to set that up again in what will be its new, permanent position.

To finish off with, a footnote. Not long after I’d started on this post at around 8.00 pm on Sunday we had a power cut. Typical that it should happen after I’d just moved the caravan as far as it could be from my ‘abris’ where my generator was with no way of getting a connection down to the caravan. In the event I went to bed early – really early at around 8.30 pm – but when I got up at around 6.00 am on Monday, the power was still off.

So nothing else for it but to get my generator out of the ‘abris’ and bring it also down to the bottom next to the caravan where it’s now whirring away. Later on when norm al service is resumed I’ll have to make the arrangement more permanent – with the generator under some kind of cover. And also a bit further away from the caravan than I’ve currently got it too 😐

I was at my computer at 8.00 am this morning working on yesterday’s video when I was surprised by not one, but two enormous ready-mixed concrete trucks arriving outside my caravan.

One drove down forwards and the other backwards so they ended up being parked back-to-back. The reason was that the first one was equipped with a concrete pump while the second contained the concrete that would be delivered into the column holes from yesterday.

The idea was for the second truck to pour its concrete into the hopper of the first which could then deliver it where needed through the long boom of its pump.

The driver of the first truck initially began pumping the concrete into the column holes while controlling the whole operation using a portable remote controller. About half an hour after he’d started he was joined by the foreman from the contractor who was accompanied this time by a different No. 2 who assisted and also became very busy adding the steel reinforcing as and when it was needed.

As soon as the pumping was completed the second truck left for its next job leaving the pump truck behind to be cleaned up before it too departed. The site was then ready for the next operation.

This consisted of inserting vertical reinforcing rods into the now-curing concrete columns that will be used to connect them to the horizontal beams I expect and setting up marker strings around the outline of the house and what will be the positions of the beams ready for the next stage.

Everything was over and done by just after 10.00 am, so yet again in just over two hours. I am blown away by the speed of progress over the last few days and how quickly and thoroughly things have been done. Amazing!

Here’s the video that tells the story of today.

The other thing that blows me away is to see something that was originally just an idea in my head and a design on my computer actually becoming a reality right in front of my eyes. It’s an extraordinary experience, one that I’ve not experienced before on such a scale and incredibly satisfying 🙂

That’s all it took for the two guys to finish their work yesterday. I’m amazed given that they dug 15 holes that will become support pillars for the concrete beams that will lock the base slab of my house to the underlying rock layer and the amount of earth that involved shifting.

Here are some shots that I took around mid-morning after they’d left.

Some of the holes that they dug were the best part of 2 metres deep.

Here’s the video that tells the whole story.

As I type this I’ve already been blow away by the next development which I’ll talk about in my next post!

And they really mean business. Almost dead on 9.00 am and a small truck drove up containing a few items – some concrete blocks, some concrete reinforcing mesh, stuff like that – and I thought , OK, so they’re getting ready for when they start on the groundwork in a few days time. Not a bit of it! A couple of minutes later a large truck drew up hauling a trailer carrying a Komatsu excavator.

They had the machine unloaded and working within half-an-hour. There are only a couple of guys working but seeing how much just one got done with an excavator the other day I reckon they’ll have my footings and slab ready for pouring concrete before I know it. It seems that after all of the delays things will now be happening like greased lightning! To say that I’m pleasantly surprised, and impressed I have to say, is an understatement…

We had a cold night last night and I didn’t sleep that well because I kept waking up with cold feet and couldn’t be bothered to get up and put some socks on. As a result I was still dozing at 9.00 am this morning when I was awoken by a vehicle engine. I thought originally that a truck or tractor had passed my caravan on the road but then realised that it had been the sound of a vehicle stopping and when I peaked out through the curtain a small truck containing two men was parked outside next to my car. I hardly expected things to start happening so quickly and I greeted them with a ‘Bonjour’ and then moved the Kia in case it would be in their way.

In the event I needn’t have bothered because it wouldn’t have been and what they had come to do didn’t take them very long anyway. They’d come to mark out the ground in preparation for when work starts on the foundations. They did it by carefully spraying red lines between the pegs whose positions Thomas had carefully checked at the end of last week, then removing them, placing three of them with red lines in between to show the house’s centre axis and then mounting level boards on poles in positions all around the foundations’ outer limits at what will be their final height.

And that appears to be it. It only took them just over a couple of hours before they disappeared again but I guess that everything’s now ready for the groundworkers to come onto site when they’re ready to go. Here’s a shot showing a small section of what they did.

And here are some more shots of the whole site taken from various positions.

It came as something of a surprise to me when they arrived this morning as I had thought that not much if anything would happen so soon after the ‘terrassement’ work. But I was wrong and for all I know the work on the foundations could now begin at any time. I have to say that as I have now booked my flights to and from the UK it would be great if they coincided with the period during which the foundation concrete was curing and little or no other work was being done. You never know, I might be pleasantly surprised 😉

The race is almost ready to start. We’ve had yet more continuous rain almost since the ‘terrassier’ finished his work on Wednesday. Thomas, my builder’s surveyor, returned unexpectedly late Friday afternoon to make sure that the posts that we’d put in place where the corners of my new house will be were still exactly positioned after the ‘terrassement’. It had been raining before he arrived and he had to don his rubber boots and by the time he’d finished, they were caked with thick orange-brown clay.

It has rained almost continuously since he left but now it’s stopped and it looks as though although there are some high winds forecast, there won’t be much more rain next week. In fact, it looks as though the temperature will get up to 18 degrees Celsius by the end of the week, which is quite extraordinary. But it means that there should be a good chance that the land will have dried out before then if the builder is able to start work.

In the meantime I’ve made and uploaded a video showing the work that the ‘terrassier’ did last Wednesday which can be viewed by clicking on the link below.

I intend to produce a series of videos of the whole building process, or as much as I can of it, right through until my house is complete. I have to go back to the UK for personal and family reasons shortly after the build has started but with a bit of luck that might coincide with the time that’s needed for the concrete in the foundations and oversite to cure before the work starts in earnest. However, at this stage I don’t know for sure and I think that I’ll need to book a flight from Bergerac to Stansted anyway before the fares start to rocket and then just see how things work out.

This morning I received some more stuff from my builder. One item had to be signed and returned to them – namely my agreement that the hole that was dug on Wednesday – the ‘implantatation’ of my house – is in the right place. It’s quite important actually because until they have that, the builder wouldn’t be able to start on the actual house-build, so I made sure that I got that in the post back to them this afternoon.

The other thing was a demand for the first tranche of funds – 15% of the contract build price – and as the banks don’t open on Mondays and are more concerned with dealing with walk-in clients on Saturday mornings, it was important to also get that done today. I know my way around the system much better now and what buttons need to be pressed and sure enough, after setting up the builder as a recipient of transfers from my account myself and emailing the bank to effect the transfer on my behalf (the sum is above my ceiling so normally I couldn’t do it myself), it still hadn’t been done after more than an hour.

So I phoned again to find out what was going on and was told that nothing could be done until they had received my email. So I said that they should look again and Voilà! Next they asked me for the builder’s account number. I said that they didn’t need it as I’d already set them up as a ‘bénéficiaire’ and all that was needed was for them to effect the transfer as it was above my transaction ceiling. So the young lady raised my ceiling – I think they are getting to know me as a client now, and my foibles – and I was able to do it myself.

But why all the urgency, you might ask? Because I note that on the ‘assurance de chantier’ (construction insurance) that the builder furnished me a copy of there’s a date for the ‘ouverture de chantier’ (opening of the site) of 15th March. That’s next Tuesday, and as neither the banks nor the post offices open here on Mondays, if I hadn’t dealt with the transfer and the confirmation of ‘implantation’ today it’s likely that that start date would have been missed. It may still be, but at least it won’t be because of anything that I haven’t done…

At last! I got a message from my builder on Monday that he hoped to have a ‘pelle’ (mechanical shovel) on site today to get going on the ‘terrassement’ for my house. This involves digging out an access road that will be filled with heavy stone to take the weight of the site vehicles and machinery during the construction and will also be the access road to my house when everything’s complete, creating a level base for the house and digging out the foundations.

After all of the delays that the project has been subjected to I hardly expected anything to happen – maybe tomorrow or the day after, but not today – but this morning I received a message that the ‘terrassier’ would be arriving between 8.30 and 9.00 am and sure enough, he did. That meant that I had to get cracking immediately to move my ‘tonnelle’ which he confirmed would be in the way, and after I’d removed its side curtains and pegs, he gave me a hand to move it out of the way down my land.

Afterwards I got some more help to move it the whole way to the bottom, pegged it down again as we are expecting some gusting winds over the coming days and moved the table and chairs into it as well.

The ‘terrassier’ started work immediately and yet again I was amazed at the amount of material that these machines can shift in a relatively short time. These shots were taken just a few minutes after he’d started work on the access road.

While I was setting the ‘tonnelle’ up down at the bottom, he’d already started shifting earth down to create the level platform on which the house will be built.

The last three shots show what will be my house’s access road.

And amazingly, all of the above was done in just over an hour the shots all having been taken at only around 10.30 am.

The ‘terrassier’ continued working until stopping for an hour’s lunch break at midday and then got going again. I then had to leave to pick up the chemical-free plastic hosepipe that I recently ordered to extend my water supply to the bottom of my land so I can move my caravan. On the way back I passed a large aggregate lorry which I knew had just delivered the stone for my access road. Sure enough, when I got back the ‘terrassier’ was busy laying it and was already half finished.

Here are a some shots of the large hole he had dug out to create a level platform for the house.

As well as the ‘pelle’ which he had used to shift all of the earth the ‘terrassier’ had also brought a heavy roller with him and after laying the stone for the road to his satisfaction he then unloaded it and began rolling it down to create a firm base. Here are some pics that I’ve lifted from a short video that I shot using my Fimi drone while he was doing so.

And that was it. He’d finished, packed up and gone by 5.00 pm which I found amazing given the amount of work that just one man had done with the help of two machines. Imagine how long it would have taken back in the day when it all had to be done by hand! But anyway, my project is now moving and today was a great leap forward. I can’t wait for the next stage which will be laying the foundations, but more on that later.

I thought that it was about time that I repaired the mudguard on my large trailer. It was damaged by the careless forklift driver at Brico Depot when he, against my instructions, tried to load a Big Bag of ballast that I needed for the concrete base of my new ‘abri’ from the side rather than from the rear. The forklift arms could not be extended far enough because of the weight of the bag and he couldn’t get it into the centre of the trailer. When he lifted it up again he caught the mudguard, bent it upwards and ripped it off its two outer securing bolts on each end.

Since then I’ve used the trailer several times, most recently for collecting the wood that I’ve needed for my new fencing, but I’ve always been worried that the mudguard might flap up and down so much that it would also be torn off its two centre securing bolts. I already had some large diameter washers so today I took the time to remove the two bolts from which the mudguard had separated, add a large washer under the head of each one and retighten them, thus clamping the mudguard back in place. It was totally successful and now I have to get round some time to fitting a new metal floor in the trailer to make it perfectly serviceable and roadworthy again.

I was originally then going to start work on my fence but before doing so I decided to check on the two little fruit trees that have been waiting to be planted in their original little pots for over a year – I was given them as gifts for my birthday last year, not the one just gone. I found that it being Spring and all that, both trees had lots of buds on and those on the plum (the other is an apple) were almost ready to come into flower.

First the apple.

Now the plum.

So now that the guys have finished whacking the fence posts in using their tractor down in the area where I wanted to plant them it was time to get them planted without further ado. Usually you’d just need to grab a shovel, dig a hole, add a bit of peat or whatever, drop the trees in and that would be it. But not here in the Dordogne. As we saw again the day before yesterday with the fence posts, you only have to scratch the surface here and you find rock. It was the same again today for the trees and so it was time to get out my trusty pickaxe again.

I wanted to plant them towards the bottom right hand corner of my land so they will not block my view of the valley beyond and will act as a kind of natural screen when I move my ‘abri’ for my ride-on mower and other garden tools down there. I had in mind a kind of triangular arrangement with another tree, probably a cherry, that I don’t have yet and couldn’t plant anyway until all of the work in that corner has been completed. So I left a gap in the lower far right corner of the ‘triangle’ and planted the two today in the other two apexes.

Here’s a shot with the apple on the right and the plum on the left.

Here’s a shot from a different angle with the apple again the closest and the plum a bit further away.

Finally, here’s a shot looking back up the land with the plum closest to the camera.

It took quite a bit of effort to get the job done but eventually I was able to give the roots of both trees a good soaking with two buckets of water each, which I hope will be all that they’ll need to overcome the shock of being planted and enable them to flourish. So job done, not that I expect to be harvesting much fruit in the time that I’ll be living in my new house 😉

We have steady light rain today so after two days of working outside I’m happy to stay inside my caravan. I rehung the ‘tonnelle’ wall curtains yesterday so they are now as they should be except I’ve hung them on the upper rail rather than the lower one to keep them clear of the ground, as the following two shots show.

The rain is also running off the roof without dripping into the inside which bodes well for the furniture that will in due course be inside both of my tonnelles. The wind picked up a bit and became quite blustery for a while yesterday afternoon so I also fitted guy ropes to the tonnelle’s four corners to ensure that it stayed firmly in place.

They can be seen in the above pics but what is not clearly shown is just how much space the tonnelle actually takes up now with them attached. The conclusion I’ve come to is that when building starts the space to its side will be insufficient for the workmen to move around it and it would become even worse if I tried to erect a second one, which is my intention.

So I’m now definitely of the opinion that I need to move my caravan back down to the bottom of my land and preferably before the builder comes on site. It will be a bit colder down there in the short term compared to where I am currently but I think that despite today’s rain, we have turned the corner into spring and the days will soon begin to warm up.

I’ll also have to extend my electricity and water supplies but that won’t be difficult. The only problem will be insulating the long length of hosepipe to prevent the water becoming really hot in the summer sunshine. Free hot water is nice to shower and wash-up with but isn’t good for much else. I’m also thinking of turning the caravan compared to last time so as to accommodate the two tonnelles on the available flat(ish) land down there but I’ll have to look more closely at that once the rain stops. The move will have to happen though 😉

The guys came back today to put more posts into the ground. The builder asked me to leave a space close to where they’ll be working so they have enough room to swing the arm of their mechanical shovel round without damaging or knocking my fence down, so with not having the whole of the south side to do, it should have been a piece of cake.

But it wasn’t. The first few posts went in OK but when they got to the first one whose position was fairly crucial, the first gate post, it hit a rock and wouldn’t go fully in. We had to remove it a couple of times and reposition it a bit but it still went in crooked, which will make things more difficult for me when I come to make the gate. Then when we went to bang in the second gate post that absolutely couldn’t be moved, a hydraulic hose on their tractor burst.

We thought that that would be it for the day but the repair was quicker than we all expected and they were able to return after lunch to finish the job off. In fact they were dogged by even more problems with one post snapping, others twisting and several not banging in deep enough, all due to the amount of rock under the surface. Strangely enough, for some reason there was considerably more rock on this side of my land compared to the other and it really slowed things down and made for a much more untidy end result.

In fact we gave up trying to bang any posts in up at the road end because they were only going about 20 cm into the ground, nothing like the depth required. We decided that when the time comes, we’ll have to drill post holes along the top end with a mechanical augur and mount the posts in concrete. That’ll have to be after or just before the house-build is complete and the builder won’t need to manoeuver any large vehicles or equipment up there. Here are some shots that I took at the end of the day starting at the road end.

In the first shot, the post on the left will have to come out because as you can see, it has hardly gone into the ground at all. The post to the right of it which isn’t shown is a corner post. I may be able to get away with it although it really isn’t in firmly enough. I’ll have to see how it fares over the next week or so while I’m working mounting mesh on the posts down at the other end after which I’ll return to start putting the horizontal bars in place on the posts up at the road end.

This shot was taken looking down towards the bottom end and was taken from about half-way down where we had to stop to leave the gap that the builder requires.

The next shot shows the two gate posts on this side. They are a bit more woggly in reality than they look in this picture but I’m sure I’ll be able to get around that when I come to make the gate to fit between them. At least I hope so.

The next shot shows the very end of the run with the first (or last depending on which end you start from) post sited inside the tree line as close to the boundary limit as possible, just as I did at the other end of the tree line where the fence on the other side of my land starts.

And finally, here’s a shot looking back up my land from the trees towards the road end.

So although we got quite a bit done, it wasn’t a very satisfactory end to the day. The posts have gone in nowhere near as well as on the other side of the land because of the amount of rock that was encountered. It is what it is, however, and I’ll just have to do the best that I can with what I’ve got. I’ll be starting on that tomorrow morning by fixing the tensioning wires in place, starting from the bottom post and working up and I hope that things go better for me then than they did today.