It was just one of those days

Some years ago I managed a project improving bridleways and byways in Hertfordshire. The area was delightfully rural and included some magnificent countryside. One of these routes was known as Back Lane, a 'roman' road that stretched between Baldock and Braughing although the County Archaeologist would state that this was a much more ancient trackway.
Thanks to a combination of neglect, neigbouring farmers draining their fields into it and the unwanted attentions of four wheel drive and off road motorcyclists it was in a terrible condition. In some sections it became necessary to surface the route. Rather than using the "industrial" solutions used elsewhere (the dreaded road arisings) we used local natural materials.
When gravel is dug out of the ground, mostly in the Lea Valley it is fed through a series of sieves and washed to produce different materials. What falls off at the end of this process is lumps of stone, mainly flints, known then as rejects. These formed a very open base layer which was free draining and if compacted enough very stable. The surface was made of "as raised" hoggin. This is the gravel as it comes straight out of the ground. It was important that there was a fairly high level of clay content so that it would bind together.
Because of the relatively remote nature of Back Lane it was necessary to move material to site in a dumper truck - the larger the better and great fun!
On this particular day during one trip it became clear that one of the tyres on the dumper was rapidly going flat. Traveling back to the Land Rover revealed that not only was the dumper tyre now completely flat but the rear tyre on the Land Rover was also flat. Well the Land Rover had a spare so no problem...
Except that during the last cleaning and tidying session the Land Rover jack had been taken out but not put back in! Our base was approximately 3 miles away and the nearest house about half a mile away. And this was well before mobile phones took away our initiative.
So it was just one of those days.
The solution?
We had the spanner to take the spare off the Land Rover. We also loosened the nuts on the flat wheel on the Land Rover. The using the leading edge of the dumper bucket under the towing hitch we were able to take the Land Rover wheel off and replace it with the spare. Two trips to ATS and one to our base got us moving again.