Last weekend we went to the Peebles Agricultural Show, to provide a demonstration of dry stone walling. This year they gave us a pile of greywacke, the local whin stone. They'd put it in a corner between two tents, which was a good location as it was visible but not in anybody's way.
Greywacke is quite challenging to build with until you're used to it - it's very angular and irregular, and tends to shatter if you try to trim it with a hammer. They hadn't given us an awful lot of stone, so decided to build a short section of wall with only one complete cheek end, and with a cut-away at the other end showing the internal structure.
We got quite a lot of interest, and (for once) I didn't get a single farmer asking me if I'd like him to show me how to do it (I always answer yes, which only one has ever risen to, and after a few minutes he said "This is quite challenging stone" which I felt vindicated my work quite well).
We built the wall (as far as we could) in the local style, with a band of covers beneath the copes.
We'd used up pretty much all of the stone by lunchtime. I suggested taking it all down and building it back up again, but as this wasn't met with much enthusiasm we just left it was it was.
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