473.
A day that almost began with a catastrophe ended with a wrong being righted. Craig and I headed off to get some more cement and sand and a few edging blocks while Linda got Liam ready for his last day of freedom with his friends at the football pitch. When Craig and I returned, we found Linda in the car perched on top of a large sandstone block that we had manually maneouvred into a position where it would stop the driveway from slipping onto the access road. The car was wedged fast, and it took both of us to lift it, remove the block of stone, pack two bags of sand under the its front wheel and eventually get it into a position that would allow it to leave our property. Since Linda was a bit shaken, I got the car out of its perilous predicament, and managed to get it through the gates - but not before I hit one of the gateposts and put a slight scratch on the car's offside rear panel. Nothing major, and nothing at all to get upset about. Craig decided that we ought to move the gates, thereby giving us an extra 8 sq metres in which to maneouvre the car. With that, Craig set about lifting the gates and relocating them in line with the fence. It was a hard job that eventually needed four of us: two to get the gates into the correct position, one to mix the concrete and another to add water to the sand, cement and gravel mix. He did a superb job, and had the gates in their new place within a couple of hours (although he did manage to swear quite a lot at the gates' reluctance to move to the correct positions). Tomorrow, we will finally finish the retaining wall (I hope), bed down the edging strips (I hope) and compact the soil in readiness for the gravel, which is being delivered on Wednesday morning - or so they say!

Last year we strolled along the beach at Balmerino