Wooplaw again

We returned to Wooplaw on the first weekend of July (see previous post) to complete the work we started last month, and to address another bit of collapsed wall. There were five of us there, so we split into two groups: the first group went to finish the work we'd started the month before, while the rest of us tackled another collapsed section where there had been a large tree near the wall which had come down in a storm - apparently, even before it came down, you could see the wall being moved by its roots in strong winds ...

As with a lot of the walls at Wooplaw (and indeed, a lot of old walls everywhere) you just have to take a call as to how much you're going to take down and rebuild, as pretty much the whole wall could do with some attention. We decided on a section about four or five meters long, where the wall downhill at least was in pretty good nick, giving us a decent starting point. It looked like the stone had been coming off for some time: on one side there was a path, which was fairly clear, but on the other side there was a lot of stone, some of it buried quite deeply. There was also a ditch covered by undergrowth, which though thick enough to obscure the ditch completely wasn't strong enough to support the weight of someone stepping on it, as I can personally attest. The advantage of this experience was that at least it made me cautious about taking stone off on this side - I think we only lost one stone submerged in the ditch (though my guess would be that there was plenty more in there, including quite a few of the copes).

After lunch the first section was complete. A couple of us had to leave, but the rest of us worked on on the other section, and by mid afternoon when the rain started in earnest we'd got it up just about to sub-cope height. 

Initially we decided to call it a day at this point, but as we had to clear the stone which we'd put on the path side anyway, and it was almost as easy just to put it up on the wall, we did this, and put the copes we'd managed to salvage (about half what we needed to complete the job) up as well. I don't have a photo of this as all the people with the necessary equipment to provide one had left by this point, but hopefully we'll be back soon and I can get one of the completed job.

(More photos to come ...)