Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’…
Dawn finally arrived this morning, and once the toast and coffee had been gobbled down it was time to mount the roller and give the drive a bit of a going over. I was slightly apprehensive about how it would all go, not having driven anything like the roller before, but in the end it was pretty easy. But only once I’d been up and down the drive a couple of times. The first few trips up and down were pretty bumpy (especially with the vibrate function working overtime on the rough piles of gravel), making me wish that I’d left my breakfast to settle a bit more before setting out.
The most interesting and unexpected thing to me was watching the impact one big rock in the gravel had on the rolling for metres afterwards. It’s kind of like the impact that a rock has on the water of a river, but I really didn’t expect to see that sort of pattern in gravel and rocks. Other than that it was just a grind. Up and down, up and down…
But up and down, up and down, round and round, up and down I went for a few hours. Stopping only to let my stomach settle a bit, and to pull out some of the big stones and fill up some of the worst holes. I swear I’ve never reversed as much in my entire life as I did today! (Of course some of that is probably due to riding motorbikes rather than driving cars. Not much call for a reverse gear on a sports bike!)
But it did look enough fun for Bec to give it a go for a while too. I think she even enjoyed it. The grin suggests she did, at least.
On Monday we’re getting another layer spread on it of finer and firmer stuff. That’s going to need packing down too, so we’ll have to give it another blat with a roller sometime soon. But luckily we can’t do that quite yet, my kidneys need a chance to climb down from my ribs first.