Dry Stone Walling Association South East Scotland Branch
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Training courses
  • Professional services
  • Blog
  • News
  • Get in touch
  • Links

Pentland Way plinth

1/8/2015

0 Comments

 
The Pentland Way is a new walking route, running from Swanston, just south of Edinburgh, to Dunsyre in South Lanarkshire. To mark the start of it and to help publicise the route, the Friends of the Pentlands decided to erect a plinth with an information board. And seeing as they thought it might be a good idea to build it in stone, the asked us to give them a hand.

The walk starts just above the village of Swanston, near where we previously built a memorial seat to Donald Graham, a former president of the Friends of the Pentlands. Two pallets of stone had already been delivered, and the turf cut away.
Picture
This job had a few differences to our more usual builds: the dimensions were more critical (as it will need to fit the information board which is to be mounted on it); the sides were build without batter, i.e., vertically; and the whole thing had to be mortared together (so, not really a 'dry' stone structure at all - but built on dry stone principles anyway). The stone was old building stone, which was good for this job as it was mostly pretty well squared off.
Picture
Picture
There were quite a few of us there (three SESDSWA and four FotP), but as the plinth was quite small (84 by 59 cm, to be exact) only one or two people could really work on it at a time. So I didn't feel guilty about taking some time out (and my family, who'd tagged along) for lunch up at the Donald Graham memorial seat. There was a heavy shower just as we got there, but it soon cleared, and the high back worked as designed, sheltering us from the breeze.
Picture
After lunch we walked up the hill to visit the 'fairy dell' - an old quarry, probably for the (now collapsed) dry stone wall that runs across the hillside below it. There's another dry stone seat there, built by ourselves and the FotP two years ago (and repaired last year). One end had once again started to collapse.
Picture
So I put it back up again.
Picture
When we got back down, the plinth was nearing completion.
Picture
We put sloping stones were on the top, where the information board will be mounted.
Picture
The forecast had predicted heavy rain between three and five p.m., and sure enough at five to three, it started to come down - I just managed to grab this shot before we had to run for cover.
Picture
I'll pop back at some point after the board's been fixed so you can see the finished result.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    This blog, and the rest of the site, are produced by Donald McInnes, treasurer of the SES DSWA (I'm the baldy one, sometimes in a saltire hat).

    Archives

    August 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    November 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013

    Categories

    All
    Practical Dyking Days

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.