Wooplaw wall continued, plus a bridge

The last day of August (I know, I've been very slow, but my laptop has gone on the blink) saw half a dozen branch members once again at Wooplaw (see posts previous), with the aim of continuing the wall where we left off last time, and also looking into changing the way the ditch/burn was bridged a few yards downstream.

We'd made the existing crossing (above) a couple of years ago, by putting down a large pipe and 'roofing' it over with flat stones, but this hadn't worked well as the pipe formed a bottleneck which got clogged up with twigs and leaves. Wooplaw had told us they could provide us with logs/planks to lay across: however, there was no sign of these, and anyway they'd've tended to rot in such a damp location.

The only other option seemed to be to build an arch, but this is anything but easy even with a former* (which we didn't have) and an abundance of suitable stone (we had plenty of stone, but you really need lots of regular wedge-shaped pieces - not common in the greywacke we were building with). So, much to Mike's regret, we gave up on the bridge idea and just continued where we'd left of on the wall.

However, all was not lost. As we were taking down the next section of collapsed wall, we discovered three huge flat stones (the largest over a yard long). So, despite the doubts of some as to whether it would work, a few of us set to work to bridge the ditch with them, leaving the 'doubters' to continue with the wall.

* A wooden arch to build over, which is removed once the stone arch is in place.

The first thing (after we'd secured the 'bridge' stones to prevent them being built back into the wall) was to remove the existing clogged-up crossing and dig out the ditch. This would allow us to build a small retaining wall on each side, on which we could lay the big stones (if you look very hard, you can just see the blue pipe used previously to the right of the picture).

Bob Fleet, the former chairman of Wooplaw, turned up as ever to provide moral support and encouragement, and managed to persuade a group of people who'd been camping in the woods the night before for a 30th birthday party to come and help us move some stone. They were absolute stars - not only did they move masses of stone up to the wall for us (a great way to deal with a hangover, I was assured by one young gentleman), but also provided us with burgers and bacon rolls.

Meanwhile, the wall builders hadn't been idle, and had stripped down and started to rebuild another six or seven meters of wall.

The bottom of the ditch (unsurprisingly) got very muddy, but we managed to get one of the retaining walls done before lunch.

And after lunch we got the other side done too.

After that, all that remained was to put the big bridge stones over the top. This proved a bit trickier than anticipated, but after some adjustment we managed to get them in and stable. We used other flat stones to pave the approach and hopefully help keep the bridge stones in place.

And finally, proof that it works.

The time spent on the bridge meant that we didn't get as much wall built as on our previous visits, but it's still coming along nicely. Hopefully another day or two of work will see it completed right down to the gap at the bridge.