Dances with diggers

Planning preparation

As part of any plan for the Small Mission Hall, I will need an off-road parking area. It will be one of the requirements when I finally submit a planning application.

At the moment, there is a small area of overgrown, rough, hard standing.

It forms part of the shared access to the croft behind me. Just about enough room for one vehicle to park, as long as you don’t go back too far.

If you venture a bit too far back, you’d end up wheels-deep in the boggy moorland grass area beyond. Not ideal.

I’ve been using a couple of painted tyres to mark how far back it was safe to go. Simple, and so far, it’s been effective. Just not a long-term solution.

Shared solution

As this area is shared access, I got in contact with the owner (a local councillor) to make sure he was happy for me to get this access area levelled and gravelled.

It was hopefully a win-win scenario. He would get usable, drivable access to his croft, and I would get drivable access to a new area of usable off-road parking.

It ended up being a bit of a convoluted process that involved different meetings with various members of the family to explain my building plans.

Eventually, everyone was happy and verbally agreed to contribute half of the costs for the shared access area of the work. I’d be paying for all the additional off-road parking area off to the side.

Groundwork guru

Luckily, the Groundwork guru (Danda) of the area also happened to live nearby. He reliably informed me that getting the work done would be a bit weather-dependent. That’s true for most things here.

The ground needed to dry out a little first, then wait for a few dryer days before the work could commence, most likely in springtime.

That bit could take a while, like most things with this project; patience would be required. Not something I’m particularly good at.

Mechanical monsters

Eventually, all was good, it was finally time to let the mechanical monsters loose to do their thing… enter the kool as Kobelco SK75 SR.

Having someone like Danda on the job was brilliant. His extensive local knowledge, understanding of the different ground types, depths to dig, best materials to use, etc., was invaluable.

Window wonder

Meanwhile, I was trying my best to concentrate on my deskbound day job tasks. This proved to be more than a tad tricky with the work in progress going on outside my window.

Like a moth drawn to light, it was fascinating watching the mechanical marvels at work. At last, things were in physical progress.

Some things might just need to wait a while. It was amazing seeing the transformation taking place right now.

Eat earth

Danda has a real finesse in using such large, brutal-looking machines in a relatively precise and delicate manner.

Several tonnes of topsoil were removed as the area was scraped back to provide a base for the off-road parking area.

The natural inclination of the site was reduced a little at the same time. Again, this will help later on with plans for natural surface water drainage.

As expected, a few large rocks and boulders were also unearthed in the process. These large rocks I’ve had put to one side. They’ll get used later on down the line in some way or other.

Mean machine

Danda and his digger put in a serious shift today. Huge progress, tonnes of earth shifted, you can finally begin to see what the outside space will be like.

The shared access route to the croft behind would also soon be easily accessible.

Day 1 dig done

Several trips and truckloads of topsoil were taken away from the site in a pretty seamless operation. The JCB Fastrac 3230 is a beast of a machine!

With the sun dipping lower in the sky, the first phase of the work complete, it was time to end day one’s activities. Amazing to see what had been accomplished.

Topping time

The next day, bright and early, phase two of the work began. With the sub-base scraped clean and tidied up, it was time to add the topping.

For this, a local coarse rock gravel was used. It gives vehicular grip to the surface, whilst also allowing good natural drainage.

Again, several tonnes and a few truckloads of the coarse gravel were needed to complete the task

Proper progress

This top layer would be spread over the area and then compressed into the substrate through multiple passes of the hefty weighing digger’s tracks running up and down over the area.

At this stage, Danda explained that the surface would still be a bit spongy, but would gradually firm up, hardening over time as it all settled and dried out.

Massive makeover

The final result of Danda’s hard work. He has been brilliant. What once was a patch of wild, unloved wasteland has now been completely transformed.

Weirdly, it now also makes the area feel so much bigger. It seems to have somehow grown in size.

Off-road parking sorted in style.

No ChatGPT used here

Hopefully, by now, you can tell that all of my written and image content is self-generated.

It’s far from perfect; a bit rough and ragged around the edges. Grammar and writing are not my forte; it’s a struggle and takes me an age to write anything.

However, it is my own personal, authentic, individual take on things; it’s all done by me. I do not, and will not ever use AI to produce generic churn for smallmissionhall.com – that is just not how I roll!

All of this is produced by my human hand. It’s an important part of the creative process for me. If you like or value this in any way, please feel free to like, share or otherwise let me know.

Hey, you could even go crazy and maybe Buy Me a Coffee if you wanted.