On Sunday we kicked off our dyking year with a joint project with the Friends of the Pentlands building a raised bed at the Harlaw visitors' centre. The design was by some school children and was meant to be based on an earthworm - it was certainly wiggly enough, and the pinkish sandstone was the right colour. The wiggly design was a bit of a challenge as the stone was guillotined into pretty large rectangular shapes not well suited to doing curves, but the judicious application of a sledge hammer helped. The foundation had already been laid by the Friends, so we cracked on with getting the walls up. And by lunchtime it was taking shape nicely. I couldn't stay for the whole day, but by mid afternoon it was looking pretty nearly done, so I didn't feel too guilty about leaving the others to finish off. And I've heard that they did indeed get it finished - we're back in the vicinity in a couple of weeks, so hopefully I'll get some photos of the finished job then.
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First, an apology for how long this took me to post. Excuse (skip this paragraph if you don't want to hear it): I forgot to take an 'after' shot at the end of the second day's build, so I didn't really have anything much to show. And even if I had remembered, the seat was only half way up by then ... and then I wasn't at the final build, and it's taken me up until now to get back down to the site to take photos. Anyway, yesterday I finally managed to get back down to the site (by the Water of Leith, at the back of the Balgreen bowling club). And this is how it looks: The seat is part of a project to improve this corner of the walkway, with some of the work being done in conjunction with some local 'NEETS' (Not in Education, Employment or Training, I think it stands for), giving them A) the chance to learn some dyking and B) some ownership of this site, therefore hopefully improving its chances of not being 'reconfigured' by disaffected youths. To this end, two training courses were held in which a wall was built at the other end of the site. The first of the courses, at least, went pretty well, with a couple of the lads concerned seeming reasonably interested, and the product wasn't too bad either. The tape was added as a deterrent to any would-be reconfigurers, and for a while it seemed to be working: however, when we went back to do the seat a couple of months later, the deterrent effect seemed to have worn off. A quick look round located the missing stone, the culprits showing some dedication to their cause as they appeared to have loaded the stone onto a shopping trolley and wheeled it to the middle of the nearby bridge, with the whole lot then being deposited in the river - no mean feat considering the weight involved. Our original idea for the seat was to build a semi-circle in the centre of the raised bed area: A quick survey of the stone indicated that we'd probably actually have enough, and the right shapes, for a full circular seat, and we set to work putting up the poles for this (somewhat challenging) build. However, before we'd got stated, Ben from the Water of Leith Conservation Trust showed up and mooted the idea of a curved seat to one side, centered on the same point. This sounded just as attractive, and an easier build to boot, so we shelved the circular seat idea (though we may yet go back and implement it at a later date), and set to work. Work continued apace with only occasional interruptions to provide directions to walkers and cyclists confused by the nearby diversion in the walkway, and by the end of the day we we'd got a good few courses up. We returned the following week and got the bottom part of the seat pretty much finished: however, I have only a 'before' photo for this day (looking very much like the above - only without the sunshine - fortunately no reconfiguration having taken place), so you'll just have to imagine how it looked (not a hard task, really - like the above, but with more stone on it). And a few very dedicated members returned a few days later to complete the seat back. Dave and Ben from WoL also returned and repaired (and completed) the wall. And all in all, the finished site is a great improvement on what was previously a pretty uninteresting corner of the walkway. And with any luck, the winter weather will deter any attempts at further reconfiguration, and by next year they'll've got used to it being there and won't bother trying to trash it.
Today we went to the Ferry Glen in Queensferry to build a stone seat by the side of the walk/cycle way that runs along the route of the old dockyward railway. The Glen is admirably run and maintained by the Friends of the Ferry Glen, and they'd made ready the site and arranged for the delivery of stone and mortar (a necessary evil in such a public place). There were only a few of us (well, two until I arrived an hour late, ably assisted by Neil from the Friends), but the mostly rectangular Alston stone we were using is quite quick to build with, so by the time Liz (also from the Friends) had shown up with some fantastic banana bread, and Neil had brought us bacon and sausage rolls for lunch (and Chris had turned up to swell our numbers) we'd got the first three courses on and had made a start on the fourth, seat-level course. The design is similar to the bench we build at Slateford by the Water of Leith (see previous posts), but with a seat on only one side: this usually faces a waterfall but due to recent dry conditions it was hard to tell that this was the case - fortunately(?) this won't usually be true. We knocked off at about 4 with the seat back still to do - Richard and Alan are heading back tomorrow to finish it off. And, of course, proof that it works: UPDATE 5/9/2016: Richard, Alan and Chris returned the next day to put the back on: And here's the finished product. Hopefully we'll be returning at some point to do some more work at Ferry Glen.
As I mentioned in the last post, we didn't manage to finish the culvert wall at Swanston on our last visit due to a lack of stone. So today we went back with more stone, and finished it off. Though overcast, at least today the clouds were above the hilltops - compare the below with the same shot taken the last time I was here (see post of 19th June). Due to improvements in the Dunbar train service, I was a mere hour late - previously, if I'd taken the first train out of Dunbar on a Sunday, I'd've been three hours late ... I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies ... When I arrived work had already started on the coping (see last post for previous partially-coped state). There was a bit of footling about to do, as we were mortaring on the cope (I know, hardly 'dry' stone, but needs must with a low wall next to a popular public path), but by lunch time we'd got it finished. After lunch we walked up to the top culvert wall - the uphill side of this was fine, but the downhill side was much damaged, even though it had only been two months since we put it up. This is the problem with low walls beside public paths - unless the copes are huge stones, it's too easy for passers-by (and/or their dogs/children) to knock them off, and once the cope's off, the rest of the wall will soon come down. Even though the upper wall hadn't been damaged, we decided to mortar on the copes, and after rebuilding the lower wall, we mortared its copes as well. We also anchored each end of the wall with a big stone ... these were below cope level, and needed smaller stones on top to take the wall up to the same height - it looked a bit strange, but it's a lot more secure that it was previously. Not far from the upper culvert is the curved stone seat we built a few years back (see posts passim), which once again had become dilapidated at the ends - we suspect the local highland cattle may be to blame, for using our cheek ends as scratching posts. The solution is probably to mortar the ends on more securely (they were mortared before, but evidently not enough); however, we'd run out of mortar by this point, so we just rebuilt it for now, and hopefully it can stay up until we get a chance to go back up with some more mortar (we piled loose stones around the foot of the wall, to try to dissuade the cattle a bit). On our way back down we found that someone had augmented our work on the first culvert wall by adding some stones to the top. I suspect some small people who had seen us building the wall on their way up the hill decided they'd like to have a go themselves on their way back down. So it would seem there is some hope for the youth of today.
A few weeks ago, a few of us built a couple of small walls above a culvert in the Pentland Hills Regional Park, on the path above Swanston village (see post of 19th June). Since then, some of us have been back and built another wall over another culvert further down the same path. The wall's a bit bigger than the first ones - but it's a bigger culvert, as well. There wasn't enough stone to finish the coping, but we've got some more and we're heading back next weekend to finish it off. With thanks to Chris for the photos.
Last weekend (apologies for the delay, it's been a busy week) a few of us (to begin with just Chris and I, but Dave showed up mid-morning having taken the train to Stow and walked over) returned to Wooplaw to continue work on the wall along from the cheekend we built on our last visit (see previous post). This whole wall is pretty tumbledown - it's right next to the cabins, and it looks like sometimes shortcuts to and from them are taken over the collapsed parts of the wall (which, of course, just exacerbates the problem). We stripped the next section of the wall down to ground level - this wasn't the bottom of the wall (as we found out when we got down there): it would seem the ground level has risen since the wall was made - not surprising with all the leaf mould from the woods each year. The rain stayed off, and by lunchtime we'd got it up to just below through level (which was quite close to the ground, the bottom of the wall being buried). Mike (who normally organises our Wooplaw visits) has been out of dyking action for a bit due to a motorbike accident, but he showed up for lunch and to provide us with some moral support. He said he'd send me some photos of his injured foot, but he hasn't done this yet so I don't have one here to show you (perhaps just as well, as it sounds like a pretty horrific injury). After lunch the rain came on (but not heavily enough to stop us working) and we got the throughs on, but then found we were running out of stone - there's probably quite a lot that's got buried over the years, or fallen into the adjacent ditch, or been pinched for other purposes (such as making fireplaces for the cabin area). A search in the nearby woods found a few more piles of stone: unfortunately we didn't have a wheelbarrow with us, so carrying it down to the wall was a slow business. Also, after some discussion, we decided that the coping done on our last visit wasn't really what was required (we were lacking a big 'anchor' cope at the end), so we took that down as well. There was a big cope on a collapsing section a bit further up the wall, so we stole that. Mike had headed off after lunch, but had very kindly offered to come back at four o'clock and pick up Dave and myself and drop us at the station (I'd driven down with my family, but they'd headed back when the rain came on: Chris had his own car), so we packed up then and headed off. We'll need to come back and finish off and re-cope this section, but it's a lot better than it was and hopefully will be enough to deter any short-cutters in the meantime. And when we got to Galashiels we found we still had 20 minutes until the train, so we stopped off for a quick pint - which turned out to be not quite quick enough, as even though the near end of the station was only four or five minutes walk from the pub, the entrance was at the far end. Fortunately Dave was a competition-class runner in his not-too-distant youth, so he sprinted ahead and we just caught our train - and, indeed, had time for another quick pint in Edinburgh before I had to catch my connection back to Dunbar.
Today we (well, Alan and I, though Steve did drop by from his greenwood working to lend us some moral support) rebuilt a collapsed cheek end at Wooplaw Community Woodland. I think it was the busiest I've ever seen it there, excepting perhaps the 25th anniversary weekend - there were guides and Duke of Edinburgh awardees and a party of 3 and 4 year-olds, and a lot of parents (plus one taxi) picking up some very hung-over teenagers from a party the night before. The cheek end in question is by the cabins (so, right in the middle of all the goings-on), and though the top half of it had completely gone and it was very overgrown, once we'd cleared away the loose stones on the top the bottom part was still in pretty good nick. It was probably just as well there were only two of us, as the path runs by the wall and there was a steady stream of toddlers (plus parents) and girl guides going to and from the cabins and it would have got very crowded if there had been many more of us. By lunchtime we'd got it back up to about half the finished height. We went down to the 25th anniversary seat for lunch so we could check on the stone bridge and the arch we'd made here previously (see posts passim). I'm happy to say they were both still holding up. The same wasn't so true of the seat, however - the same part we'd had to repair earlier in the year was coming down again. The problem is probably further down the wall, so it may need stripped down and rebuilt, but for now we just put it back up again. After lunch we carried on with the cheek end. By about 3 we were running short of stone - plus it had clouded over (and the forecast was for rain around then) so we just coped what we had done and called it a day.
Last weekend (sorry for the delay in posting this) we executed a little project in association with the Friends of the Pentlands to build a couple of dykes over a culvert on the path above Swanston in the Pentland Hills Regional Park. I was a little (well, to be strictly accurate, quite a lot) late. It had been overcast all morning, and as I headed up towards the site I could see the cloud coming down the hills just above the housing line. On the way up I passed the plinth we build last year to mark the start of the Pentland Way (see posts passim) - good to see it still standing. As I got up towards the build site I could see the cloud level getting worryingly close ... ... but when I turned the corner I could see that we were (just) below it, for the time being at least. I arrived in time for lunch (wouldn't've wanted to miss that) to discover that I wasn't the only thing which hadn't been on site first thing that day: there had been a misunderstanding over the delivery of the stone and hasty arrangements had had to be made to get a trailerful up there so that work could commence. This meant that we didn't have as much stone as we'd expected, and so the wall had had to be made quite a bit smaller than originally planned. Dave and Richard along with Ian from the FotP had already completed the uphill side. After lunch Chris showed up as well, and we got on with the other wall. The culvert is formed by a plastic pipe (Ian had gallantly run down the hill earlier to fetch a saw to cut it to the correct length), so on the more visible downhill side we constructed an arch over it (stronger, as well as looking nicer). And by about 3 pm we'd got it completed. Being in an exposed site, I expect we'll really need to mortar on the end copes, but hopefully it'll survive until we get a chance to do that. And despite my concerns, the cloud level didn't descend, at least not until after we'd packed up and gone.
Here's the finished version of the West of Scotland Dry Stone Walling Association's Gardening Scotland show garden (see previous post for the build). Viewers of the Beachgrove Garden (BBC Scotland gardening program, for those not in the know) will maybe recognise it from their review of it on last week's show, and from the final rounding up piece which they did from one of the seats (here being modeled by Norman, John and Adrian from the West of Scotland Dry Stone Walling Association). The garden was awarded a silver medal (though several visitors said they thought it deserved better). As ever, it seems a lot of work for something which is only there for three days - by the time of writing (9pm on Sunday) the garden will have been demolished and packed up ready to be carted away. However, it's not gone forever - it will be rebuilt later this year at the Erskine hospital, where it will be a permanent feature at the entrance to the site.
Each summer (see posts passim) the West of Scotland Dry Stone Walling Association build a show garden (prominently featuring dry stone work, unsurprisingly) for the Gardening Scotland show at Ingleston, near Edinburgh Airport. And, being the sociable lot they are, they invite the other Scottish branches to come along the weekend before the show to help with the build. This year marks the centenary of the Erskine vererans' hospital organisation, and in celebration of that they've designed a garden based on their work. The main feature is a wall which will support the Erskine logo, flanked by two stone trees and four timber beams (representing the four regiments Erskine supports). In front of the wall will be three raised beds, two shaped like hands which surround a heart-shaped one in the middle The stone trees are made of slates inserted into the sandstone wall. It's quite an ambitious project, so it didn't quite get finished over the weekend, but a few keen souls are giving up their bank holiday Monday to finish it off tomorrow - I should have photos of the finished garden after the show next weekend (or even better, why not go along to the show and see it for yourself - it's on from the 3rd to the 5th of June).
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AuthorThis 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
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