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New Swanston seat mortared and memorial plaque attached

27/10/2014

Following on from the previous abortive attempt to finish off the 'new' Swanston seat (see previous post), last week we once again met up with the Friends of the Pentlands to mortar the copes and seating area of the recently built Donald Graham memorial seat, and to affix a plaque to his memory.
This time thankfully it stayed dry apart from a few spots of rain later on, and we were able to get the mortaring done.

And, this being done, affix the plaque.

The rain came on just as we were finishing, but not enough to be a problem for the mortar. The text says (in English and Gaelic), "In memory of Donald Graham. Loving husband, father, grandad and Friend of the Pentlands".

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Original Swanston seat re-coped

27/10/2014

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Earlier this month we had planned to go back with the Friends of the Pentlands to the Donald Graham memorial seat at Swanston (see posts passim), to mortar in the seating area and the cope. However, when the day arrived, it was chucking it down - not good weather for mortaring. So we abandoned this plan, and decided to re-cope the original Swanston seat further up the hill, where the original turn cope had been destroyed by hungry cattle (also see posts passim).
We passed the 'new' seat on the way up, and it was heartening to see that, despite the lack of mortar, the cope was still very much in place.

The 'old' seat wasn't in nearly such a good state - the turf cope had been almost completely dragged off, and the stone below had started to fall down in places, particularly at the ends.

It being decided to re-do the cope in stone (this being less appealing to cattle), the first thing to do was to collect enough cope-sized stones from the collapsed wall running below the seat.

And the wall making the back of the seat was then repaired and rebuilt where it had come down.

The stone being some what uneven, it was decided to 'pad' beneath the cope with the now-bare turfs, to provide a more stable base for the copestones.

And once this was in place, the copes were laid on top.

I like the result myself - the turf top made the seat blend in to the hillside just a bit too much. And hopefully, this time it will prove a little more resilient.

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British Geological Survey open day

1/10/2014

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Most years, for the last decade or so, we've gone along to the British Geological Survey open day at King's Buildings in Edinburgh, and built something for them (and for the entertainment of their visitors). However, they're moving home next year, so it didn't seem such a good idea to put a few more tons of stone construction in. Instead, we had a table with 'mini-dyking' kits, where children (and the occasional adult) could try their hand at building a dry stone wall.

Almost everyone spotted that the flat-ish square-ish stones were better than the rounded beach pebbles to build with. And almost everyone got the idea of putting stones of the same height next to each other. And some very quick on the uptake individuals got the hang of it well enough to get the wall coped.

Looks the part, I reckon. Well done everyone who had a part in it!

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More Wooplaw photos

1/10/2014

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Mike's sent me some (much) better photos of the Wooplaw builds. So here they are.

Here's what the 'old' bridge looked like, i.e. a ditch with a plastic pipe in it and some stones on top (complete with me fighting the midges, or possibly the nettles, in the background).