Making Roads is an Art

We went to look at the site on the way to Somewhere Else. Mary had told me the road looked good but that the site looked a little wetter than she would like. There were three huge yellow machines at the entrance, and a piece of red and white tape and a sign about men working. The new road is pale and interesting and goes down in beautiful curves, a slightly different route from the other new road that ended up in the peat. On the way, it passes a huge quarry which is where the road material - moraine - comes from. We have lost a couple more trees but Tristan's camp site is still there. Only - if you take the old road from the original gate you run the risk of breaking your leg falling into the quarry.

The road is on a sort of causeway and there is a culvert for the small stream, which was gushing amazingly as the weather had been spectacularly wet. On to the new house site, where the knoll was and now emphatically is not. We disappeared calf-deep in the wettest bits of the site and understood Mary's remark.

There is a nice view from the new site which is more elevated. It snuggles quite nicely into the hillside, though there is a step of a couple of feet at the south side. There is a bank at the back just high enough for green-roofed wood- and bike-sheds.

On the way back to the car we saw that a minibus had stopped: Alex Sutherland, who explained that we had passed him coming along the road and he had driven back to Invergarry, changed vehicles and come back to chat. He is a very nice and skilful man and I hope the fact that we made it clear that we admire his road does not mean that he will inflate its cost.

He says that the moraine will be a good hard surface when it dries out. He also said that he had made the house platform a little larger than expected because he had found a place where the drillers may well put their borehole. Something about the kind of rocks there.

We thanked him for the elegant curves. He said he finds straight lines boring. We thanked him for putting the top soil back so nicely. He was amazed that anyone would not do that.

We think the site will look very nice and natural when it has settled down a bit; and there is a rather decent terrace behind the house which might be a garden - a thing we had not planned. And the former new road, which has been filled in again, might do rather well as the beginnings of a rhododendron wood.