Mrs D told us how she got her garden area paved over when she was undergoing cancer treatment and realised she wouldn't be able to give it the attention it needed any more. Unfortunately, a poor job was done and there are large gaps between the paving slabs, through which weeds are growing.

Our main task was removing said weeds and filling said gaps with sand. We started cutting back the overhanging weeds. Cue Helen using a saw as a machete: "This is my Indiana Jones impression... Ouch! A bramble!" (Very convincing - it was as if I was face to face with Harrison Ford).

After clearing the patio of weeds, we began the job of filling the cracks with sand. After a bit of experimentation with technique we finally got "into the groove". Unfortunately the technique we decided was most efficient involved squatting/kneeling at floor level, which was pretty back-breaking, but we had plenty of conversation and hilarious comments about deep cracks to amuse us.

After using up our 3 hour limit and the 3 sandbags Mrs D had provided, we'd unfortunately only done about half the patio, but it does look a lot better. We swept up and tidied our tools, cut back a few more brambles and were on our way back home to warm up.