Things that go bump in the night

One Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I got up, I did my regular daily exercise routine, I went back to the house to collect Reggie and my coat, and we set off on our daily walking route - up to the top of the terraces behind the house, cutting through the woods to join the top of the upper donkey track, then dropping down onto the drive.

As I walked, Reggie ran on ahead of me and I pondered the day ahead, I was planning to try to finish off the strimming of the upper terraces (cutting the grass to make the upcoming olive harvest easier, as well as it being the last grass cut of the year).

As I descended the donkey track Reggie, who was by now way ahead of me on the drive, broke into a volley of angry barking. I assumed (as is often the case) that he had reached the gate and found a car parked up on the tarmac outside (and very often with an Italian, er, gentleman relieving himself next to the car). I quickened my pace to go and make a half-hearted attempt at telling him to be quiet (in fact, we usually secretly praise him for barking at people having wee-stops at our gate).

As I got to the bottom of the donkey track to join the drive, something didn't quite look right, and the barking wasn't coming from the gate, but closer to me. As my brain whirred and computed the images I was seeing, I realised that we had a bit of a problem. Reggie was outraged not at someone having stopped near our gates, but at something else that shouldn't be there: an enormous chestnut tree that was now lying across the driveway and completely blocking all access to or from the end of the drive.

Well, that was the end of my strimming plans!

Reggie and I hurried back to the house. Knowing that our friends Paul & Kathy are often out and about on a Saturday morning and that, like us, they also pick up a weekly bread order at Amanda's local shop in the village, I quickly sent a message to them to ask if they would mind collecting our bread and dropping it off for us as we wouldn't be able to get out to go and collect it ourselves. I sent them a photo to explain the situation we had found ourselves in.

I then went to deliver the news to Stuart, who was only just coming round from sleep - and in the space of 5 minutes of opening his eyes I had blurted out "we've got a problem", our friend Jude had messaged him to say "we just drove past your house, did you know that there's a huge tree down, next to your gate?", and Paul & Kathy had messaged to say "we're coming to help!".

Still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Stuart got up and while we were still sipping the first coffee of the day and shovelling pieces of toast into our mouths the gate buzzer rang to announce the arrival of the cavalry in the form of Paul & Kathy equipped with gloves and chainsaws. Since they couldn't easily get past the tree, they turned down the offer of a coffee and instead set straight to work, so by the time Stuart, Reggie and I had walked to the end of the drive to join them we were greeted by the noise of Paul's chainsaw, while Kathy was busy clearing away the large branches and stacking the logs Paul had cut.

We quickly got to work with them, and after just a couple of hours, between the four of us we had managed to clear the drive, pile up all the loose branches and stack up all the logs. 

Teamwork certainly does make the dream work!

Superstars Paul and Kathy had to rush off to go and help some other friends out (this time with taking their olive harvest to the mill), so we weren't able to thank them for their efforts by providing them with lunch, but they did stay for a coffee once we had managed to clear the drive, and we were joined by Jude and Carl (who live a little further up the road from us), who had been the ones to send the concerned message earlier in the day and, on their return had seen us and Paul & Kathy just finishing the clear-up.

Once everyone had departed, we were left with some more clearing up to do, but without the pressure of needing to get the driveway clear we were able to work at a comfortable pace.

Amazingly, the tree that fell was one that Stuart had had his eye on for quite a while - he had identified it as being one that could potentially cause a lot of damage should it fall, and thus had mentally noted it and planned to fell it at the earliest possible opportunity. As it turned out, the tree did the job for us, and it couldn't have come down in a better position (indeed, Stuart acknowledges that even if he had felled it, it would have been unlikely that it would have come down in such a perfect position). Most importantly, it missed the gate and didn't do any damage to the driveway itself, and it also somehow managed to miss falling on the little three-wheel cultivator that stands just inside the gate.

The tree didn't appear to be dead or rotten in any way -  it seems it just got a bit top heavy, and uprooted itself in the soil that had become very soft due to a lot of recent rain. Thus we had been "gifted" an entire chestnut tree's worth of firewood for next winter. 

The whole experience left us feel very fortunate, for the friends who are willing to jump to the rescue (and we know other friends would also have done the same), as well as for the lack of damage, the ticking off of a job on the to-do list (without having to do it) and the addition of firewood to our pile!

All that remains of the tree.

After counting the growth rings, we reckoned the tree was around 45-50 years old - about the same age as us!