Wooplaw Gullet wall (almost) completed

On the 25th of August (I really am playing catch-up here) Mike, Donald and new member Pete visited Gullet Wood at Wooplaw Community Woodland (www.wooplaw.org.uk) to finish off the section of wall which we'd begun to repair earlier in the year. We'd got up to about through level previously, and as ever I forgot to take a 'before' shot. However, here's how it was when we'd been at it for a short while, when I remembered that I should be taking photos (breaking news - I've now uploaded the post from our previous visit ... so, the closing pictures from the 1st of May visit will be the same (barring a few stones which may have fallen off in the meantime) as the 'before' photo which I forgot to take ... ).

If it looks a bit overcast in the photo, it's just because it's much overshadowed by trees - it was actually a lovely day. Which made a nice change from the last time an attempt was made at completing this section, when Mike and Alan turned up and spent half an hour looking at the wettest day of the summer from Mike's car before giving up and going home (and fair play to them for turning up at all - the rest of us just looked at the rain from our homes). The weeds had grown up somewhat behind the wall, so we cleared them and got on with building.

And by lunchtime we'd got it up to cope level at the bottom of the slope and level with that for the rest of the gap. 

At the bottom of the hill where we were working there's a pond with a picnic table, where we sat and had lunch in very pleasant and sunny surroundings. If I'd thought to take a photo of it, I could show you. But I didn't, so you'll just have to imagine it.
After lunch we carried on building, though we were running out of suitable stone to some extent.

And it pretty soon became apparent that we were not going to have enough copes to fill the gap. However, I reckon we'd done pretty well, and we left at about four with it only needing the coping stones to finish the repair.

Update: Alan went along a couple of weeks later and finished off the cope - I'll post a photo of the finished wall if I can get one!