How to upset your neighbours - All of them at once...

We spent about 5 hours yesterday digging and trying to secure one of the banks on the drive up to the house.  It had a big crack in it after the rains and had made the earth move, which caused the overflow water from the well to run all over the place.  We thought it'd be a good idea to try and prevent it from going any further.

Glenn dug all the channels (again....) to get the water flow in the right direction, off the drive! We then had to get concrete posts as far into the ground as possible to make a fake retaining wall.  It was a great idea but we can tell you now that digging wet mud in strong winds and on and off rain is not that much fun.  The mud is in fact more like clay and when you are sunk into it halway up to your knees and literally stuck, you just don't really enjoy it at all. (We won't mention about Susie slipping and falling over getting covered in mud from head to toe and getting mud all the way into her underwear)

Anyway, we managed to finish it and the water was flowing where it should and we were tired but happy with the result.

Today we went back to check that it was still standing.

On our way we met our neighbour and we waved and smiled as usual but only received a halfsmile and a nod back from this usually very cheerful man. Thought it a bit odd but didn't think too much of it. 

Well, so.... The bank had of course collapsed even further and all that we had built up yesterday was ruined, but the water from the well was still flowing so we were not too upset.

We went for a walk up to the top of the land where there is another well to see if this had anything to do with the problems we had.  Only to realise this one is full to the brim and decided to drive to the shop to get a hose and bits to drain it.  We didn't get very far...

As we followed the road down we saw this

It doesn't look that bad on the photo, as you can't see the whole picture, but basically a big part of this bank up from the road had collapsed too. It has come from about 2 meters up and fallen into the road. As you can see, the water was running in the middle and digging into the road.  The really bad bit is that it was only 2 days ago that they put all the gravel on it to even it out and get rid of all the cracks and holes in the road. We now understood why the neighbour didn't look too impressed.  We also had another man watching us trying to dig it all out by hand laughing at us.  What can we say, we are the village fools.... 

We ended up digging and removing the lovely mud with shovels and a wheelbarrow.  This is when you wish your road was flat....

We got the water going into the ditch again (sort of....) and cleared a bit of the road (this took us nearly 2 hours) and then gave up. We had a call from Peter the builder who said a really bad storm was expected tonight so we thought there'd be no point getting rid of all of it as it will only happen again.

The good news is that we found perfect sized wine boxes for one (and it only cost 38 cents!!!!)!  Happy weekend!!