Reinforcements

Saturday morning and once again we were up bright and early ... too early really to start any excavation work or attempted fixing of the micro digger's limp. It was therefore time for a coffee and a search for an operators handbook for the micro digger via Google. We soon found a number of forum posts on the subject as well as an online copy of the handbook. The two sources confirmed what we thought. We had to release a grease nipple, remove the grease, push the idler back, put the track back on, replace the grease nipple and then pump grease back in forcing the idler back out thus taking up the slack in the track. Sounded very simple and we could follow the instructions .... but could we undo the grease nipple .... nope!

At this point reinforcements arrived in the shape of some very good friends and members of the East Yorkshire Koi Society. Time for a quick coffee and an explanation of our predicament. As the technical solution was proving to be as non productive as our first attempt, we decided to give the brute force and ignorance with a bit of technical ability a go. After some more groaning like a cave man - bingo! The tread popped back on and we were in business again.

Having excavated an arch in the soil that Dorothy & Toto would have been proud of, time now had to spent filling in parts of the earth rainbow so that other areas of the site could once again be excavated by digger instead of by hand. This proved to be a very wise move which probably saved us time in the long run however there was one particular area which simply couldn't be reached unless we put back in a considerable amount of earth. This wasn't going to halt progress though and with spade tightly gripped between his teeth, part of our reinforcement duo jumped into the hole and quickly set about it like Manic Minor - the old Spectrum game! OK a bit of an exaggeration there then, he fell more than jumped, but the rest of it is true!

In all honesty it was very, very hard going with the spade especially in the sweltering heat we're experiencing and Roy was an absolute saviour down in the hole, clearing the area that could no longer be reached with the digger as well as straightening the sides and levelling the floor. We really can't thank him enough for all is help.