The Old Gate

I had visited the chateau three times before I discovered something amazing up by the small lake. To get to the lake from the chateau you walk west between the two large fields. Here there is a long stretch of grass between these fields and one day it occurred to me that it looked a little like a long driveway or lane. The lake is right

by the boundary of the chateau lands.  All along this boundary is the remains of a very old wall. The wall, judging by the size of some of the trees that have grown through it must be minimum of 300 - 400 years old but possibly even older. The long stretch of grass comes to an end at the boundary wall and previously I had noticed what looked like a couple of trees in the overgrowth at this point. However when I started thinking that this looked a lot like a driveway I then looked more closely into the undergrowth at the end of the grass strip. It was then that I realised that the two trees were in fact two gate pillars heavily overgrown with old ivy and scrub. So today we decided to try and clear away this undergrowth and check out these old gate pillars. It turned out

to be not as much hard work as we thought, the strimmers cut away the overgrown area very quickly and then the larger bushes and small trees quickly succumbed to the chain saw. We then cut a path to the old wall where it had more or less collapsed so that we could get over to the other side where a farm track runs around the outside of the wall. Now we could attack the undergrowth on the other side of the gate and clear that away. That only left us with the old ivy which was very thick in places but after an hour we pretty much had it all off. The transformation was amazing, just look at the pics! Job done, what a great feeling of satisfaction!