Plenty of digging required for various purposes:
- Turning over beds and borders that were remaining in place
- Digging out a base for the greenhouse to lay flagstones
- Creating a separate flagstone base for a large water butt
- Moving soil from above areas and the rear of the garden, which is planned to be a hedge eventually
- Using the excess soil, which is good quality topsoil having originated in the front garden, to fill dips in the old lawn
- Digging a trench to lay a cable for greenhouse electrics
The cable was being put in by a qualified electrician but had to be buried 18 inches deep, which as one might have expected, turned out to be three inches deeper in parts than a clay layer – that wasn’t fun.
Planning all this together with a few other preparatory jobs meant it could be done reasonably efficiently despite changeable weather, and three days over two weekends plus a few short evening sessions saw the digging finished by myself. At the same time, I removed any large stones, weeds, small stones in some areas planned for reseeding the lawn and a few bushes including some large ones. The stone went as hardcore for a neighbour’s drive, and the wood from the bushes, after being left to dry out for a few weeks, went to people who could make use of it.
I found once again that working in focused, relatively short periods of say 1.5 to 2 hours on particular areas with decent tools worked well, especially around the weather. I refamiliarised myself with some of the soil and what else lay underneath, including “ant city” and a forest of nettle roots under some of the undergrowth!
It also gave me chance to use some favourite tools, notably the trusty old mattock (similar to a pick axe) which comes into its own for this type of job. Hiring machinery to do just relatively small and slightly fiddly jobs didn’t seem sensible or time- or cost-effective.
Within this same task I also put bricks around a disused manhole for the old drain, and put a repotted magnolia on top as a temporary measure. 
This keeps the drain accessible should it ever be needed and lifts the surface level up to where the new lawn is planned to be.