Flattening the track to the old gate

The original gate to the chateau stands next to the lake, nowhere near where the new gate is. There is a grass track that leads to this old gate but like everything else it was neglected for years. The condition of the grass was very bad and it was anything but even. There were holes and bumps everywhere. 

We are having one of the large fields next to this track reseeded with a good quality park grass at the end of this month. So we decided it would be a good opportunity to sort out the track to the old gate. Pascal, his son and their big earth mover set about this today. The plan was to use the top soil that we would remove from the track to fill in around the edge of the lake. Nothing goes to plan with a chateau!As the topsoil came off it revealed - stones and lots of them.

So we then had a discussion as to where we could put all of these stones. It needed to be somewhere with a lot of space as Pascal said there would be a mountain of them! We decided to put them next to the farmyard. These stones will actually be ideal to use as hardcore when we put in a new gravel drive to the chateau from the main road. 

There were so many of these stones, laid to quite a depth that they must have been used for hardcore long ago when the track was the way into the chateau. It took all day for the track to be reduced to the same level as the field.  It is a great improvement and we are down to the natural soil so the new grass should do well there. Pascal was right too..... We now have a mountain of hardcore!