Apologies for not posting a blog last week. The reason was that we were engaged in pretty much a single activity which continued into this week (and will do so into next week) and it didn’t make great pictures to show.
At the end of the last blog I said, having completed Hayloft, we were able to turn our attention to the ‘field / lawn’. This is the space that used to be a lawn behind Priory (between Priory and the new pool area) that has suffered significantly with the project.
We had been hindered getting a lawn reseeded by having to wait for a new trench to be dug to lay the power cable to the pool. Our original landscaper buried a conduit for the cable in January 2024 when we were away, that turned out not to be useable but getting him to dig another proved harder than it should!
Eventually we asked another landscaper to come and assist who also removed lots of surplus soil and levelled the ground as best he could with a larger digger. We then hoped to get the area properly levelled when someone assisted us with a rotovator.
What the rotovator showed us was just how stoney the ground is naturally and is even worse in the spoil dug out to create the pool. As such, what was left was a slightly ridged surface covered in stone and pieces of slate with even large pieces just below the surface, so we had to start one of the most boring tasks we have had to do since living here!
We have spent hours raking the area, collecting the stones and rolling the surface as flat as we can get it. We would love to have been able to turf the area as we would only have had to level the space and not remove the stones, it would then create an instant lawn. However, having researched it, it would have cost almost as much as the pool! I exaggerate a bit but it would have been a much larger expense so we have bought lots of grass seed to seed a new lawn.
This put us in the odd position last weekend when we desperately wanted it to rain so we could lay the seed and, at the same time, we desperately wanted it to remain dry so that our tiler could return and continue with the pool terrace!
It has stayed dry, very dry, certainly unseasonably dry (we can’t recall the last time we had rain of any significance) as such the ground is cracking in places as if we were in a drought. It does mean that the terrace has progressed well but we haven’t laid any seed at all.
Even the forecast doesn’t seem to have rain for the next week which should mean that the pool terrace gets completed (the many May bank holidays aside) but does mean that I will need to seed the most important areas and water frequently otherwise we will have no chance of having any sort of lawn before the summer.
Thankfully, raking and rolling isn’t all that we have been doing. As it is such a dull task, last week I broke it up by doing something that I wanted to get done last year, re-staining the terrace fences between our house, Priory and Granary.
We built these some years ago when the previous fence panels blew down in Storm Zeus and wanted to replace them with something a little more robust. Then, I stained the fencing elements before putting them up which was relatively quick and they have lasted pretty well. Last week I had to paint them in place and it took much longer than I’d anticipated so I have only managed to get one coat of stain on them but they already look so much better. A second coat will make them look like new.
We have also been out and about a bit. When we don’t have guests arriving we generally go out on a Friday night for an end-of-week beer and, as we have found with restaurants, we are discovering more and more bars and French-style pubs that we enjoy going to and this includes a new bar which opened last Friday.
Brewery Sklent began in Foret-Landerneau in 2020 moving into Landerneau itself in 2021. This year they took over the old Fiat garage converting the garages into the brewery and the old showroom into a new bar and shop, so we decided to support their bar on their opening night and it was good fun. We now have 5 restaurants we can recommend in Landerneau and now there are 3 bars.
We spent last Sunday raking and rolling but today we headed back to one of our favourite coastal towns, Locquirec, on the north coast. We have walked this coast before but on a sunny day, as today was, it gives stunning views over the channel – as well as a number of bars in the town for a post-walk refreshment.
Next week, which I may have mentioned is forecast to be dry(!), we hope the pool terrace will be complete; the preparation required to seed the lawn will be complete; and perhaps we will have seeded some areas and started the watering. We’ll let you know …
Kenavo.