The last couple of weeks have been dominated by the delivery of our Growplay climbing frame. Building it was easy. Sorting the play area is another matter…

My plan to have all the ground work done before building the frame didn’t quite happen. The frame components arrived last Friday, but the sleepers and stones were only delivered on Wednesday. I managed to find a local tree surgeon (Arborcure) who kindly provided a load of chippings to go under the frame free of charge.

I bought the sleepers, stones, and membrane on Materials Market. To my confusion, a Bradfords HIAB truck arrived and managed to squeeze down our lane to deliver the bulk bag of limestone chippings. It was a lot quicker for the crane to lift fourteen softwood sleepers than it was for me.

Once the sleepers were dropped off, I used the mitre saw to cut a couple of them in half. The final design was 5m on the long side, and 3.6m width. The half sleepers are a bit easier to haul around.

The single most frustrating bit was digging the drainage for the sleepers. I started with my spade and sledgehammer and made some progress, but it was brutal. A short struggle with that led me to Screwfix to pick up a pick…and mattock. That helped considerably although it was still hard work. I was planning on digging down 10cm and to a width of about 20cm. Breaking up and shifting that amount of earth was a struggle, but I made it work eventually.

My wheelbarrow has been out of action for a little while. One puncture, then another. The frame needed a lot of attention too. One struggle later I managed to get a new tube in one of the tyres, and gave the frame a scrape and a coat of paint. Once that was done, I inflated both tyres only to find the tube I replaced on last use was also punctured. It would stay inflated for a few minutes then gradually flatten. Enough to start moving some stones.

Most of the stones are down. Next step will be to secure the sleepers then fill up the area with wood chippings. It has been hard work but hopefully it will be worth the effort.

BBQ time!

This weekend marked the first barbecue of the season. I tried some olive pit briquettes as an alternative to normal charcoal and they worked really well. The Weber chimney fire starter is the best outdoor cooking investment I’ve made so far as it reliably gets the charcoal hot enough to cook with in a short period of time. I fell foul of my charcoal distribution as it works best if you create hot and cooler zones (the sausages caught the brunt of it). The fillet steak cooked beautifully. My £40 eBay investment BBQ in the midst of Covid-19 has survived remarkably well.