Hopefully the last weather related blog I shall have to write for a while now as a week ago we finally managed to clear the backlog of shearing, haymaking and silage – each of which required a specific number of dry days. It was touch and go for all of these operations and as it was we had to abandon the shearing on one day, bale the hay a day early (which brought down the quality somewhat) and only just finished wrapping the silage hours before a downpour that would have completely ruined it.

As I write this over the bank holiday weekend, the sun is currently shinning, but there were heavy showers yesterday and tomorrow promises to be overcast with drizzle!

In a succession of wet summers 2009 has definitely been the most challenging and the camping fields look somewhat battered as they have struggled to cope with the constant slipping of overloaded saloon cars unsuited to off-road work and the steady trample of welly-clad campers – hoods up and bent against the elements  - as they brave it to the loos.

Particularly hard struck has been the farm entrance lane. Never the smoothest of highways, this half a mile of moorland track has developed such a series of impressive potholes that it now resembles the lunar surface, with perfectly formed craters that can rip off an unwary exhaust with ease. And all this despite spending days and days during the winter carefully filling in last years holes with tonnes and tonnes of aggregate.

In desperation I have contacted a road reclamation firm that claim to have some powerful tractor mounted machinery that will eat up the old lane, crush it and lay it out again flat, hard and compacted and smooth as a baby’s bum.

Despite an impressive array of before and after photos in the brochure, I am still a little sceptical, but ever the optimist I have sent off a deposit and wait eagerly for October to see the results. Then it will simply be a matter of digging out the little stream that crosses the lane so that the ford will drop down to a slightly less scary level and then underpin our aging bridge with some concrete and the lane will be ready to meet the climate challenges of summer 2010. Let’s hope the Met Office doesn’t predict another BBQ summer – for all our sakes!