The Colonel has been on the road, traveling overseas the past few weeks, and only just returned to blog land. I had been working on some country roads as an alternative to my tarmac versions, and this week i finally got them finished. No Normandy battlefield would be complete without some good looking dirt roads.

Roads are one of the more simple terrain pieces to make, so i am not sure why anyone would buy any commercially made, expensive items, when you can make good looking roads for next to nothing. I am planning on playing a scenario from the “I Aint Been Shot Mum” rules so made enough roads for the map in the rulebook.

Its a very simple process. I drew my roads onto a sheet of 3mm MDF and then cut them out using a stanley knife and a handsaw. I made sure every horizontal cut was 8cm wide so all the road sections would fit together. I tried to avoid any straight lines as nothing is ever straight. Then a quick sand of all the rough edges and we are ready to decorate. I used a mix of PVA glue and a paint thickening medium to cover the road surface, and then a decent sprinkling of fine and coarse sand and some grit all mixed up. This gives the road a random texture. When this was dry i did add another round of the gritty mix down the middle of the roads as that is where the bigger stones etc could settle. The sand colours are pretty good but i did give them all a quick spray with a cream colour which blended everything together. The finishing touch was two different flocks along the edge and some random tufts. Check them out, you will see them in an after action report i plan on doing soon!