Wooplaw revisited (again)

Yesterday half a dozen of us (myself, Richard, Stephen, Mike, Chris and Alan) returned to Wooplaw to continue work on the wall and bridge we've been building there (see posts passim). Stephen and Mike had cut two logs the previous weekend and dragged them down to provide supports for parapets for the bridge. At that time both the cheek ends at the far end of the bridge were in place. But by yesterday they'd been pushed over.

Not a disaster, especially seeing as the one on the left needed taken down anyway, but it's not at all pleasant to see your hard work trashed by (one assumes) mindless idiots. Fortunately, this sort of thing is rare - this is the only time I've ever seen it at Wooplaw.

The plan for the bridge parapets was to embed the logs one either side, and then build small walls on top of them. So a trench was cut on each side of the bridge and lined with stone:

and the logs were embedded in them.

Meanwhile, Alan continued with the wall:

and I had a go at restoring the right-hand cheek-end.

The bridge build proved a bigger job than had been anticipated (partly because we widened the bridge a bit as well while we were at it) so we didn't get the parapets quite finished, but we're heading back there in a month or so and we should get them done then. And in fact it turns out that our vandals were doing us a favour (if only I'd realised before I rebuilt it*), as the widening means that the right hand cheek end will also need moved (or perhaps even dispensed with altogether, if we just join the parapet to the main wall). 

* Still, it was good practice - and, as the above photo shows, I need all the practice at cheek ends I can get. 

And despite the damp look of the photos, the rain stayed off (apart from a very few drops) - always a bonus (and especially when you're working in a ditch).