The fact that I am writing this in a warm, dry and level room, lit by electric light with all my possessions stored in an adjacent room safe from the lashing rain outside, after having cooked and shared a meal with friends, may not seem in any way remarkable. Yet to me all these things are worthy of celebration for they are the result of months of preparation and several days hard labour. I am finally situated on my land in Wales. A new chapter, and blog, begins.
Without my friends Matt and Mary with their ingenuity and dogged perseverance it would have been nearly impossible. For it wasn't simply a case of towing my caravan onto the land and parking it. The entrance to the land is a very steep and narrow gravel path with a sheer drop on the right hand side, 50m long with a kink in the middle. The planning was of military precision. We didn't attempt it the first day, tired from the seven hour drive, so stayed at a local campsite run by a Scottish couple with a huge furry dog. The Suzuki Jimny was tired too, its clutch worn and smelly from the struggle of towing the caravan and my luggage all this way.
We were lucky that the next day was dry, if windy. Having negotiated the slope a couple of times in the Jimny, partly to unload our stuff and partly to check the car was capable of the gradient, we then decided to remove an awkward lump from the tree at the entrance which protruded slightly and presented a potential obstacle. The width of the caravan is six and a half feet, the same width as the track, so there was no room for error. With a combined effort of handsaw and chainsaw we eventually carved it off. Then it was the moment I had been playing through my mind for months. If it got stuck there's no way I could reverse. If it slipped off it would take me with it into the trees below. With infinite care I took it down, with the low-geared 4WD engaged. Except for a wobble to the right near the end it went as smooth as it could possibly have. We were ecstatic. It was safely down.
Having chosen a spot just twenty metres from the bottom of the slope, along a flat track and slightly up the bank, we could be forgiven for thinking it would be simple enough to position it there. The sorry fact is it took us another two full days of slog and mud to get it there and levelled up. It was simply too wet underfoot. The ground was spongy and the wheels of the caravan just sank into it. The Jimny managed just by itself but quickly span itself into a quagmire when asked to push the caravan backwards. On Wednesday we went on the search for a winch but drew a blank. Looking instead for wooden running boards we came across Esgair sawmill in a forest above Machynlleth, an amazing place with a huge warehouse built entirely from their own wood. Peter, the owner, kindly sold us a few planks of Western Hemlock which did enable us, with some gravel thrown under the Jimny's tyres and much heaving and sweating, to get the van into position although listing badly to one side. I spent another night in it in fear of rolling out of bed. It was a wild stormy night, twice sending me out in my wellies to fix up the tarp which contained all my possessions, and leaving the ground so sodden it would have made the previous day's maneouvres impossible.
So we had to jack up the caravan, placing a suitable wedge-shaped stone under the wheel until it was pretty much level. An easy sentence to write, which hides the hours of muddy wrestling on the ground with a jack that got grit in it making it hell to turn. Our spirits rose as the spirit level levelled. As a coup de grace we put up the awning, without instructions, which is widely regarded as a surefire way to end relationship but in our case seemed a breeze compared with our recent tribulations.
I'll end it here as I don't want to use up too much electricity, keeping the lights on into the night. The episode with the gamekeeper who has apparently been happily trespassing and extending pheasant fencing here these last few months will have to wait till next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment