This weekend six of us went to Bankrugg near Gifford in East Lothian to do some repairs to a wall which had been breached to allow access to the property some time before. The breach had been made by someone without any experience of dry stone walling, and the ends hadn't been rebuilt as proper cheek ends, and were in danger of collapse.

There was a tree right next to the wall as well, which had destabilised it further. It hadn't helped that at some point some of the copes had been mortared on as well.

We were able to clear out most of the plants next to the wall, but the tree was too big (and the owner didn't want it cut down anyway) so we just had to build around it, and bridge over the roots in the hope that this would at least give it some room to grow, though eventually the wall will need rebuilt (or perhaps removed altogether) at this point.

Fortunately there was plenty of stone as a section further along had also been taken down to allow access, including some decent long stone suitable for cheek ends.

By the end of Saturday we'd got one of the cheek ends fully rebuilt and the other up to sub-cope level, with just a couple of courses and the copes needing put on the rest of the wall.

On Sunday only two of us were able to return, but as we'd had such a productive day on Saturday they were able to complete the wall. The cheek ends had got too high, so they lowered these also.

Thanks to everyone who came along to help, to our host Aileen for looking after us so well, to Doug and Sam for the photos, and to Ardy for modelling the wall so nicely.

On Saturday the 15th of August we went to the Peebles Agricultural Show to provide our usual demonstration of dry stone walling. As ever, they'd given us a big pile of greywacke to play with - even bigger than usual this time, which may be because they've asked us to make a couple of stone pillars for them at a new pedestrian entrance at some future date. We'd arranged with the show organiser that he'd pop by to discuss what we could do at some point during the day.

We set up our table in front of the stone pile with our books and leaflets and our table-top mini walling set.

And set about building a wall.

We had a really busy day with lots of people stopping to talk about all things wall or have a go with the mini walling kit. We had a clear winner, who managed six course wall.

In the end the show organiser didn't show up - I phoned and left a message for him, but he didn't get back to me. Perhaps not too surprising as he's probably the busiest guy in Peebles on show day. Hopefully he'll get back in touch at some point.

Thanks to everyone who came along to help out, and to Sam for photos as ever.

Last Friday and Saturday we were back at Threepmuir for another walling workshop with Youth Vision. On the way there Sam and I popped in to the Ravelrig Riding for the Disabled stables nearby. They've just acquired a field with a big dry stone wall in it, the rebuilding of which will hopefully feature in future blogs. There's quite a bit of it, in various states of repair ...

We got to the car park for Threepmuir a bit early, so while I was waiting for the Youth Vision people to arrive I had a look at the walls. There was one place where the copes were starting to come off ...

So I put them back on again.

Stitch in time, and all that ... there are plenty of other bits around the car park needing attention, but the Youth Vision people showed up just as I was getting the last couple of copes above on so they'll need to wait for another day.

​Friday's workshop wasn't so well attended as the previous ones - we only had one workshopee (if that's a word) and three DSWA volunteers; however, four of the Youth Vision people came and helped out too, so we felt we had enough to tackle the next-biggest section of collapsed wall.

When we got the wall stripped down it was obvious what the main problem was - the roots of the nearby trees had moved the foundations of the wall considerably, and most of the base stones were no longer anything like level. We needed a big pinch bar to get the biggest of them out.

Once we'd got it all dug out, and had been reinvigorated by crumpets with Youth Vision's own elder berry jam and Tim's excellent coffee, we started putting the foundations back in.

The bits of wall either side of where we were working were in a pretty bad way - one end in particular was about a foot off the original line (though still staying up due to the masses of mortar that had been put in), so we decided to just build our own section, and tie it in to the existing wall if we had time the next day. By lunchtime (delicious soup, made using coriander which was grown a few yards from where we were eating it) we'd got the first couple of courses up.

And by the end of the day we'd got the throughs on.

The next day my car got a flat tyre (fortunately only a few hundred yards or so from the house, and even more fortunately close to the garage where I go to get my car fixed, though they aren't open on Saturdays). This meant taking public transport to the southern edge of Edinburgh and hiking up to the site, so a one-hour drive became a three-hour bus/walk, and it was lunchtime before we arrived. There were three other DSWA people there though, plus a couple from Youth Vision, and they'd got our bit of wall from the day before up to sub-cope height, and were working on joining it on to the rest of the wall. Sadly, this meant more digging out of root-toppled foundations.

Of course, as is the way of this wall, once we started taking down the bits at the end more came down, which wasn't helped by a yard-long section of copes which were mortared solidly to each other and the stones beneath. Once we'd got this down the gap looked considerably bigger than it had when we'd started, and it was getting obvious that we would have neither enough time nor enough stone to finish the job that day.

We did as much as we could, and Youth Vision will talk to the park rangers to get some more stone delivered, and then we can arrange another visit to get the work finished.

Thanks to everyone who came along to help out and to Youth Vision for their ever-excellent hospitality, and to Sam for photos.

Last weekend we returned to Wooplaw. As I mentioned before, there's plenty there to keep us busy, so when nine of us turned up on Saturday five of us set to work on a dry stone seat, while the other four went to work on a new cheek end where the end of a wall had been demolished to improve access to the roundhouse area.

The seat was one a few they would like built along the top edge of  the valley just beyond the roundhouse. This is where the path between their two properties runs, along a line of old beach trees - there's been a wall along here in the past which has now collapsed, meaning there's plenty of stone. We'd previously propped up a flat stone next to one of the trees when discussing where to put a seat, so that seemed like a good place to start.

Some of the seat team set to work digging out the loose earth and stones while the rest went in search of large stones to build the base with, and especially flat ones for the seat area.

Meanwhile the cheek-end team went off back past the roundhouse to where the wall had been shortened. Some of the stone had been left beside the wall, though it looked like a lot of it had either been moved along to the roundhouse or used to shore up the path which runs along beside the river at this point.

We found a good big cheek end base stone further up the hill (near where we were working a month ago). It was too heavy to lift but fortunately easy enough to roll it down the hill, and by lunchtime we'd made a decent start (having salvaged some stones from the river which were too good to be used as banking support).

The seat team had just about finished the base, with only the flat stones needing laid on top.

Wooplaw is blessed with a lot of large flat stone - good for both cheek ends and seats - so once we got back to work it didn't take long to complete the cheek end.

Some of the seat team had to leave a bit early, so we joined them and by the end of the day this was complete also.

On Sunday there were only six of us, four from the day before (including three who'd spent the night camping at the site). We decided to make another seat a bit further along from the first one, and to make it a bit different we picked a larger space and decided to dig the seat more in to the bank, and try and make it look like it was emerging from the stones already there.

By lunchtime we'd got the seat area done, and had started on the back, which we were going to build right back in to the bank.

We sat on the first seat to eat our lunch ... useful things, dry stone seats. After lunch we finished off the 'proper' bit of the back, and then piled large stones on the top to join it back into the remains of the old wall at the top of the bank.

We've not got any more visits to Wooplaw planned for this year, but we'll be back in 2027.

Thanks to Derek and Sam for photos.