Practical dyking day at Gullet Wood, Wooplaw

Last weekend was meant to be our second practical dyking outing this year, but due to snow at the end of March the planned first (to Cubbiedean in the Pentlands) was postponed, and Sunday's trip to Wooplaw Community Woodland (www.wooplaw.org.uk) was promoted to first place.

For once I got there early (I wasn't sure which bit of Wooplaw's pretty expansive woodland we were working at so I gave myself plenty of time to find the others - which in the event I didn't need as I guessed right first time). However, this still didn't mean I remembered to take a 'before' photo. So here's a 'just after we'd started' one instead.

There were (originally) two sections of wall which had started to come down, each about two meters long, with another two meter section between them which was still up. However, we didn't reckon we'd manage to get the collapsed sections cleared without the middle bit falling down as well, so we just took the whole length down. Alan, Mike, Gillian and I were there at the start, joined by Margaret a short while after (she'd guessed wrongly first time).

The wall seemed to be made almost entirely of smallish stones, with no through-course at all, which probably goes some way to explaining why it had fallen down. And indeed, there were only a very few stones big enough to be used as throughs - very unusual for the walls around this area (in fact, some bits of nearby wall have been built almost entirely of big flattish stones, almost like Galloway dykes). By coffee break time, we'd got the six meters or so of wall down.

When we got to putting strings up, I notice that the end near where I was working was pretty poorly made and had started to bulge out of line (as you can probably see in the shot below, if you look closely).

So I took it down, too. This meant that we now had six and a half meters of wall to put back up. It also meant that the bit of wall I had to rebuild was now behind my pile of hearting, which I'd put in what I'd thought was a convenient place by the wall just next to where I thought I'd be working.

Whether it was becase I'd taken down another half meter of wall behind where she was working, or whether it was just because of the same problems with the orginal build which had caused the bulge (and, most likely, the original collapse), Gillian found shortly afterwards that she needed to take down another half meter of the wall as well. So now there were five of us with seven meters of wall to put back up. F. Rainsford-Hannay, in his seminal 1957 work Dry Stone Walling, says that a professional dyker can do six yards in a day. This may well have been the case (though I expect said dyker would have had at least a laddie to help bring the stone to him). However, five modern amateur dykers don't  seem to work at rate of one of Rainsford-Hannay's professionals, and we realised that our chances of getting the wall finished that day were gone.

By lunchtime we'd got the first course or two back up, but we were struggling with the lack of big stones, and were in danger of putting the wall back with the same flaws which had caused it's demise first time around.

There are various constructions in Wooplaw's Gullet Wood, mostly (unsuprisingly) made of wood. However, at the bottom of the hill we were working on there is a dry-stone construction, with a thatched roof. I've always thought of it as the fairy house (in my defence, I have a six year old daughter), but Mike assured me it's a cocktail bar, of a similar design to one he almost drowned swimming out to in Dubai.

Whatever it's true purpose, it seemed like a good place to get out of the rain which had started to fall while we had our lunch (though in the event the rain stopped pretty quickly, so we sat at the picnic table outside instead). 

After lunch we carried on and soon had the wall up to through level.

This presented us with another problem, as we had no stones long enough. After some measuring and calculating we decided we'd put in two three-quarter throughs instead (each of these takes two stones, which go three-quarters of the way through the wall from each side, one resting on top of the other). This meant only two throughs in over six meters of wall - not good, but hopefully better at least than what was there before.

And there we had to leave it. We've got a few more visits to Wooplaw planned for this year, so hopefully we'll get back and finish it off fairly soon.

Thanks to Mike and Alan for organising the visit, and to Margaret for some of the photos (those'll be the ones with me in them).