Wooplaw wall continued

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.