Working like a navvy

BY eck am aching today lasses!!!!!!!!!
Me, hubby and our next door neighbour Lynne have been filling potholes and ruts in the dirt road round our backs today. Unaccustomed as I am to manual labour, well any labour really lol, it was a bit of a shock to the ol'body but worth it if it makes getting in and out of the garages easier. In an odd way it was quite fun being outside in the fresh air and working hard especially once we started seeing some result for what we'd done. And we should all feel the benefit of doing something about it.
The road has got worse over the years with constant use and bad weather but this year after the bad snow and then rain we've had recently it was almost undrivable, it was basically turning into a big muddy patch. During the last week hubby and our next door neighbour have both got a bit stuck and had to be pushed out of a hole and we've heard quite a few spinning tyres as other neighbours struggled through the mud too.We weren't too sure how to mend a dirt road to be honest so the other night I decided to use my favourite little internet friend GOOGLE and it came up trumps.

Your such a helpful friend google x

After reading a few forums and articles on websites it seemed like the best thing to do was fill the potholes and trye ruts with 'scalpings' similar to what builders use under tarmac when building new roads. Hubby then got to work the next day ringing round local builders merchants pricing up scalpings. The ones hubby spoke to knew what he meant straight away,although they used the term 'crusher run to dust' which is a mix of differnet size limestone from 40mm down to dust. All the places he rang said this was what we should use for our road so when hubby found the supplier with the best price he ordered a couple of tonne for us to make a start on the worst of the holes. It wasn't as expensive as we thought either as it only cost just over £70 with delivery and vat.
The worst and biggest rut was outside our house where the road drops down a bit and as everyone who uses the backs for access passes over our part on the way to there garages its also the most used part of the road. Next door up had a couple of huge potholes outside their garage too which we said we'd fill in because we drive onto part of it to reverse into our garage. They offered to go halves on the cost of the stone which we thought was very good of them, they said that as they used the road too it was only fair they contributed.Lynne said as she was at home today she'd also come out and helped us shovel and spread it which was a big help. With three of us at it we only took a couple of hours to do it which was great.

Part of the road with its new layer of limestone

Aparently besides filling in the holes you can coat the whole road in this stuff and once it beds down it should make a pretty good surface to drive on for quite a long time. In a week or so once this lot has settled and bedded in we're going to order some more and cover the whole patch outside our house and garage and also fill in a few more smaller dints further down the road at the same time.
Needless to say with me being so unused to any physical labour after doing this for a few hours this morning I havent done my wii workout today. I'm hoping my couple of hours as a navvy road building will count as todays workout lol