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.