Harlaw wall repair completed

Today was our last practical outing planned for 2018. We had been intending to go to Queensferry to do some work in the community garden there, but they don't have the funding for the stone just now, which was a shame but also gave us a good opportunity to go back and finish the wall repair we started at Harlaw last month (see previous post).
The park rangers had provided us with more stone, and the weather provided us with a bright but slightly chilly day - so, near-perfect dyking conditions.
When I arrived at the site I found Dave already there, having taken down the roughly-piled copes we'd put up to fill the gap.

John and Alan showed up shortly afterwards, and between us we soon had the wall up to height.

And coped (ably overseen by Coolie the dog).

Dave had to head off, but the rest of us remained to tackle the near-hole that was forming a few yards further down the wall. Once again, I forgot to take a 'before' picture, but this is how it looked after I gave it a shove.

When we'd stripped out the loose stones, we found that there was a through stone just below the gap, much subsided at one end but still pretty much in place. Stripping the wall right down and rebuilding it (which is what it really needs) would have been more work than we could have completed today, and seeing as the wall is required to keep the cattle in the field, this wasn't an option. However, with some careful manhandling, we managed to prop the through up in a near-level position, in which we could rebuild the more-collapsed side of the wall around it.

So this we did, rebuilding the wall from as far down as we could go without stripping much more of the top levels back. This meant leaving the 'field' side still largely traced, but by rebuilding the 'path' side more solidly, hopefully making the wall strong enough to stand.

John also had to leave at this point, and Alan and I (after a brief break for some lunch) finished off the wall.

And put the copes back on.

There wasn't really time for us to tackle any of the many other sections of this wall in a state of near-collapse, but while looking for a place to climb back over I spotted another hole nearby which looked to me like it might not last the winter.

So Alan very patiently waited while I put the stones back in. It's far from perfect, but hopefully it'll be one less place for the livestock to escape through.