Walls, drains and an automobile

Work stopped until December 2004 when the council contacted us to say they intended to start work in the spring on the drain on the track immediately above the barn. You can just see the start in the bottom left hand corner of this picture of the track.

There has been a long standing problem for people lower down the mountain: heavy rain or melt water running off the mountain is not all caught by the kerb in the picture and it spills onto the road, across it and hundreds of yards downhill, in through their front doors.

Unfortunately this meant the loss of our natural grass verge, replaced with standard issue, concrete sections. The picture below (24th April 2005) shows the kerb and new berms designed to divert water from R to L across the road, into the new drains.

The picture also shows a car that appeared one day in January 2005.

Such is country life: everyone knows who owned it, but not how or when it got there. Not sure it even had an engine. It was full of holes and rubbish and several windows were broken. Anyway, after a few weeks, and spreading the word around through the farmer that we were not happy, it disappeared again. The history of the barn that we know has been colourful to say the least - a book could probably be written about previous residents (or another post at least).

In the meantime just have a look at the dry stone wall on the RHS of the picture - a little close to the kerb perhaps?