Haddington Show

Last Saturday we had our annual outing to the Haddington Agricultural Show. It was warm and sunny, but (as has been the case in the past) pretty windy on the exposed East Fortune site. As usual they'd provided us with a trailer load of the local red sandstone to play with, and we'd agreed that they could just leave this on the trailer for us to take as we needed. All well and good - until we tried to get the side down to unload the stone, and found that it was parked just very slightly too close to the tent. After trying to squeeze the side down (no chance) and move the tent pole (absolutely no chance) we finally managed to roll the trailer forward a few inches, and got one of the side flaps down which, once we'd removed the sides of the tent as well, worked perfectly.

They'd set up a couple of tables for us inside the tent as well, where we laid out our books and leaflets and our table-top mini walling set. The wind was blowing directly in through the opening, however, so we had to weigh everything down with hearting (and even so were sent scurrying after things following some particularly strong gusts).

We only really had enough stone to build a couple of meters of wall, and we decided only to take it up to through level for the most part, so we could show people how the wall was put together.

The mini walling kit proved popular again ...

... but not as popular as 'helping' us to build the 'big' wall. We had numerous small helpers, some of whom had remembered us from previous years. It seems we've become something of a show highlight for some budding young wallers, who were very enthusiastic about helping us complete the half-done section - some even willing to forgo watching the BMX stunt bikes in favour of doing some dyking.

I tried to tidy it up as they went along so it didn't present too much of a health hazard ...

As ever we had more people than I could count telling us how much they liked dry stone walls, along with quite a few "it's a dying art" and "how much per meter?" (check for walling bingo). And we must have done a decent job this year as I only had one old farmer asking if I wanted him to show me how it should be done (fair play to him - he'd quite correctly spotted a running joint near the top left). By about 4:30 pm it was quietening down, so we dismantled the wall and put the stone back on the trailer to go back to the farm again, ready for next year.

Thanks to John, James and Sam for coming along to help out, and to Sam for most of the photos, and a massive thank-you to the Haddington Show people for having us once again.