Blackruthven

​Last weekend we ran a parallel training course and members’ practice event at Blackruthven near Perth. I’d aimed to get there early to put up signs but in the end I got delayed and was beaten to the site by all the trainees ...

Saturday was an almost perfect walling day - bright and clear but not overly hot. Jim Grant, the trainer, took the trainees along to the build site while I waited to see if any other members were going to show up.

The Central Scotland branch have been working their way along the walls here for decades, and Jason, the groundsman, had strimmed the next section needing rebuilt and brought along a couple of trailers of stone. He’d also provided a wooden frame to allow us to climb over the barbed wire fence next to the trailer without getting snagged. The trainees were put to work stripping down the existing wall in an orderly fashion.

And it turned out my signs weren’t completely wasted as the site is a bit off the beaten track and they were useful to a couple of members who turned up who hadn’t been here before. There was a wee collapsed section next to where the training was going on, so we set to work on that.

(The signs were also spotted by a couple of passers-by, who came along to see what it was all about and were consequently subjected to finding out far more about dry stone walling than I expect they had anticipated. However, they were quite polite about it and took a leaflet or two and promised to look into having a go themselves at some point.)

The stone is quite flat bedded, which makes it relatively easy to work with. So while we got on with out wee section …

… the trainees cracked on with theirs. Maybe they were naturally talented, and certainly they were well instructed, as the work looked very good indeed.

We got our wee section finished on Saturday - this wall is mostly coped with thin stones (interspaced with large blocks with short fence posts set in them) but we were a bit short of suitable stones and as by the end of the day the trailers were looking pretty bare we just had to make do with what we had, including some field stones.

Sunday wasn’t such a nice day - there were bright spells but it was a bit chilly, and there were a few very heavy showers. But all the trainees showed up again, and this time we had seven branch members. Jason had brought up another trailer load of stone, so while the trainees finished off their bit we tackled the next couple of sections of wall.

There were some bullocks in the field where the trailers were, and after a while they noticed us (fortunately after we’d emptied the trailers) and came over to have a look.

They stuck around to make sure we completed the job properly …

Once again we were short of coping stones and had to resort to using field boulders, but all in all it was a pretty successful weekend’s dyking.

Thanks once again to John for some of the photos.