There's a long, long road a winding . . . (sorry!)

Following on from my last post about cheap trees and the OS approach to wargaming (that's Old School, not Ordnance Survey), last weekend I knocked out some roads for my 25/28mm armies. Simple, but laborious and not to be carried out in the vicinity of cats.

My mate Lee Abbott (see the 'Daywalker' blog, left, for interesting goodies) and I were discussing road construction (model, not McAlpine) and he pointed me in the direction of the Pound Shop. They sell packs of floor tiles for a pound each (really?), four to a pack, each a foot square. “Not round here, I bet,” thinks I. Now for funny bit number one: my wife called in to one such emporium the day after and reported the did sell said tiles. My response? “How much are they?” She just stared at me in disbelief.

My excuse is that I've not been feeling all that well lately, but last Saturday I braved the arctic winds (we never get snow round here) and trotted off to the 'mall' (ugh!) and copped for three packs – at three road sections to the tile, that's twelve feet or road per pack, so I envisaged twenty four feet of road sections, plus odds'n sods: curves, junctions and the like. This should be ample as I've had a shufty at plenty of battle maps in my time and AWI/ACW engagements aren't likely to rival the Western European road network. Roads are even relatively modestly represented on Napoleonic maps, so good oh.

O.K., the important bit: even though I had to buy a tub of B&Q emulsion – 'Hana' – to do the base coat for the ground work, the whole scheme came in at about £14, allowing for the virtually free sand and the PVA glue. Straightforward job: cut to size, sand on the adhesive side of the tiles, then base coat, highlight and flock. Anyone should be capable of that. I had a blast making them because it brought back memories of the good old days (see previous post).

The roads are 4” wide overall, which is made up of a 3” road with grass verges and, although I was a little concerned they might be too wide, they look good with units on them. I'm thinking of revisiting this project because, as you've probably noticed, other than a few curves the roads are decidedly 'Roman'. I reckon another box of tiles and plenty of curves and such ought to do the trick. I only had one 'casualty' (funny bit number two – to me anyway) which was a 6” section of tile the bloody cat sat on. Who wants a cat hair road? The cat's got a sore backside though, so all was not wasted.

So, there you go. Some shockingly bad photos follow, but please don't tell me you need detailed photographs of a road! Actually, after I'd finished them I realised that they look unnervingly like the footpaths on the Pennine Way, with little patches of grass growing between outstanding rocks. Sign of a miss spent youth, I suppose.

The total job. By the way, the 'cat' to the left of the table isn't the one in question: it's a book from Little H's growing library!

This is about as close as you get to the actual colour scheme. The other photographs are even worse.