Building a retaining wall

Quick. This job has just been finished. Without thinking ‘I must write about it tonight’, I’ll show you what I have been up to today. I owe so many stories!

So instead of dithering. Off we go.

A bit of history.

The wall in front of our house fell down in a food in 2013.

Since then I have been gradually hiding the eyesore of the slope with hornbeam trees.

Last winter I decided to be daring and extend the hedge another few metres up the road towards the house.

The bank tapers and it is a problem area.

The builders came. Or rather the building trucks came and this poor part of the hedge right next to the road took a beating. It is a very narrow road up to the house.

Car tyres, building material, creative reversing of trucks… you name it, the area was a no go.

So as it was a no go, I let it go. Until today.

Inspecting the courtyard (and believe me, I have been averting my gaze since January,) I could see there were plenty of old beams left over. These came out of the bread oven and the roof.

So all I needed to do was book up Nicolas and off we went.

The road was cleared of a thin scraping of soil, the weeds were removed. And believe me, this bank is held up by bindweed. I retrieved some allium bulbs which I will replant later.

And then Nicolas brought down the heavy beams with the aid of his trailer, and core muscles one can only dream of.

Logs levered into place. Heavy rods hammered into the soil to a depth of 50cm to keep them flush against the bank. And then another 10cm of hammering for good luck.

And we are good to go. The courtyard is clearer of one recyclable material. And I have a nice chunky retaining wall for my messy bank.

Results. Hurrah. I may even be tempted to weed this bank now and give those spindly hornbeams a bit of love.