At Last... A Manege!

Finally, it's finished, but I wanted to show you the extent of the transformation process, as only a few weeks ago, the ground looked like this:


Basically it was just a muddy, wet, wasteland, and looked pretty awful from the road.

The diggers came in and took all the top soil off. Lots of it has been bucketed over to what will be a garden for us.





It's a pretty big area, as you can see.

Next the clay was revealed underneath. All the drainage pipes were put in.

Then the black membrane was put down, and covered up with a deep layer of stone. I don't think any weeds will be poking their pretty little heads up through this lot. The surface was still sloped at this stage. You can see the beginnings of the post and rail fencing.

Then the white membrane was put down, and covered with sand. The kick-boards are on. At this stage the guys should have arrived with the rotovator to churn in all the fibre, but there was quite a delay, even allowing for the Bank Holiday, which was very frustrating.

Eventually the fibre turned up, and didn't look as I'd expected at all. At our old yard the fibre was like orange wire wool, which is why I worried it would just blow straight off the school surface on a windy day, but this was grey and had little bits of rubber in it.

Then the final touch, the rubber put on the top. This is to stop the sand getting frost on it and being too hard to ride on in the winter. It is 20m x 40m by the way.

Now all I want to do is go and (play) ride on it, but we have to wait one more day to let it settle in (a little note which I think is silly really, but there we are). I am so excited, I can't begin to tell you. We're going to have some fun on this, aren't we? Poor Barnaby hasn't got a clue what he's in for (come to that, neither has Zak!)

Have a good weekend everyone.

Mrs O.