Wooplaw cheek end

Today we (well, Alan and I, though Steve did drop by from his greenwood working to lend us some moral support) rebuilt a collapsed cheek end at Wooplaw Community Woodland. I think it was the busiest I've ever seen it there, excepting perhaps the 25th anniversary weekend - there were guides and Duke of Edinburgh awardees and a party of 3 and 4 year-olds, and a lot of parents (plus one taxi) picking up some very hung-over teenagers from a party the night before.

The cheek end in question is by the cabins (so, right in the middle of all the goings-on), and though the top half of it had completely gone and it was very overgrown, once we'd cleared away the loose stones on the top the bottom part was still in pretty good nick.

It was probably just as well there were only two of us, as the path runs by the wall and there was a steady stream of toddlers (plus parents) and girl guides going to and from the cabins and it would have got very crowded if there had been many more of us. By lunchtime we'd got it back up to about half the finished height.

We went down to the 25th anniversary seat for lunch so we could check on the stone bridge and the arch we'd made here previously (see posts passim). I'm happy to say they were both still holding up.

The same wasn't so true of the seat, however - the same part we'd had to repair earlier in the year was coming down again.

The problem is probably further down the wall, so it may need stripped down and rebuilt, but for now we just put it back up again.

After lunch we carried on with the cheek end. By about 3 we were running short of stone - plus it had clouded over (and the forecast was for rain around then) so we just coped what we had done and called it a day.