A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away ........

During my rummage through our digital stash I found these little gems, sit back and enjoy...

Bryan's Wood

Timble

Craven College

Walling Taster Days and other random ramblings!

I'm Back!!!

Finally after six weeks of being forced to carry out parental duties and care for my family I can return to being a lady of leisure and and one who (sometimes!) gets to lunch.  Firstly I have to thank Chris for handling the blog in my absence then I'll get down to business.  Thanks Chris - oh next time don't be so good at it either, you make me look bad ;-)

A taste of things to come.

My first week back collided helpfully with our second walling taster day of the year.  These sessions are arranged with the AONB to give people a practical introduction to dry stone walling, for the princely sum of £3 you get to dismantle and rebuild a wall with the added bonus of our expertise and scintillating company to help guide you through.  The booking process is all handled by the AONB office (for which we thank them greatly) and features as part of their activities schedule for the year, it is also a great way for us to give back to the AONB for the help and support they give us.  This year we ran two sessions with the first taking place in June and the second taking place this week.  These taster days always are fun to run as we love to pass on our enthusiasm and knowledge to others and we get to meet some great people and hopefully convince some of them to come along every week and join us.

Location, Location, Location...

One of the hardest parts of organising the taster days is trying to find a suitable wall to let our proto-wallers onto, it is true to say that some of the projects we have tackled over the years have tested even out hardiest members resolve.  This year the AONB came to our rescue and have put us in touch with an obliging farmer in West End with plenty of space and plenty of walls in need of attention.  So with the location sorted out we selected two or three potential stretches of wall that would give our tasters a wall to take down and rebuild plus a non too shabby view to enjoy.

Hard work, mud and coffee.

One comment we must apply to the brave souls who have ventured out for both sessions is determination.  Walling is a physically demanding and frustrating pastime (especially when you first start) and whilst we live in a beautiful and inspiring landscape it is prey to changeable and harsh weather conditions, both our taster days this year have involved battling the driving rain and whilst the experienced amongst us hid behind the wall with coffee, our newbies pressed on reluctant to give in.  We have been impressed on both sessions by their cheerful dispositions in the face of adversity.  I also have to mention the quality of the work both sessions produced, the stone at West End is coarse and irregular, it's provided challenges for all of us but the quality of the walling has been of a good standard and as you'll see in the images below the end results of their work shows a significant improvement in the structure of the wall compared to the sections either side.

So here's to;

Morag, Carol, Dave, John, Richard, Roy, Judith, Gail, Richard, Paul, Lesley, Julian, Ian & Angela

Thanks for your hard work and enthusiasm, it was lovely to meet you all and we hope you enjoyed your time with us, it would be a pleasure to wall with you again!

Next week.

As you'll see from Chris' blog the rest of the team were not given a week off and have been tirelessly slaving to complete the wall at North Stainley, from the pictures it looks fantastic and I'm off to NS today to check it out in person (and obviously point out the flaws etc etc ;-) , no it's not sour grapes!).  Since the site is now cleared up as well we no longer need to be at NS next week so it looks like we'll be heading to West End to finish off the wall from the taster day.  So tasters if you can make it that's where we'll be, I'll email those of you who gave me your addresses as well.

That's all from me for now, see you next week.  Em

Aha, just to update this entry I was having a sort out of my files and emails and have finally located the images from the first taster session.  So without further ado, here are the rest...



The smile says it all!

'Tis done!  And as if you haven't all suffered enough, here's a shot of your steamed chairman looking more than a little relieved.  Please note all PPE in place!

Thanks to the Richards (who have become worryingly inseparable), Phillip, Graham, Paul and Roger for another (and final) grand day's work.

We resisted the temptation to start throwing copes on straight away and instead warmed up by clearing the odd tonne or two of spare stone from the site.  I've since photographed what I'll misleadingly call our 'residue' and sent it off to a local stone merchant in the hope that he might come and take it away.  Holding my breath?  I don't think so.

I have to compliment the Richards on their quantity surveying because, in the end, we were only a few copes short of the  length we needed.  They, of course, set to with muscular fervour and knocked up the required number in no time.

And then suddenly we could step back from the wall and ... it was finished!  Quite emotional really just to stand back and see what we've achieved (and on time!).

I'd just like to say a huge thank you to everybody who has contributed to the North Stainley project.  It's been challenging new territory for most of us but we've worked our way through the 'opportunities', learned from our experiences, and arrived at an end product that we can all be more than a bit proud of.  Thanks and well done everybody.

Oh ... I nearly forgot ... here are some snaps.

Looks great, dunnit?  So, what next?  The Great Wall of China has some embarrassing gaps; Hadrian could do with a hand in repelling the Scots, or we could .. just go back to gapping.  Watch out on Wally Nidderdale for next week's venue.

Nearly there ...

Were one to be the excitable type, one could hardly contain it this week after another excellent turnout and yet another great effort from all concerned.  Thanks to Catriona, Phillip, Richard, Richard, Graham, Ian, David and Barry for all their hard work.

What did we get up to today?  Well, two bolsters were finally condemned after the Richards had beaten them into metal pulp while finishing off the required coping stones.  Both, I thought, rathered showed off by knocking up several 6" numbers as well as the remaining 3" stones which have evidently become a bit easy-peasy for our muscular duo.  In recognition of their tremendous labours, I append a photographic record of the raising of the first cope.  Brilliant job guys!

There's a clue as to our second achievement in the phrase 'raising the first cope' and you'll have guessed that we also finished the two 2" courses to bring the wall up to full height.

The more perspicacious among you may have noticed that we've also had a bit of a tidy up.  Barrow loads of walling and rockery stone now await new owners in neat piles nearer to the road.  No decision as yet as to what we do with our leftovers - suggestions welcome.  Overall we probably have about 20 tons available which says nothing for my quantity surveying and probably confirms the old adage that wallers are never satisfied with the stone at hand!

 I just threw that one in for the hell of it.  By the way, the only suggestion I've had for a collective noun for wallers was from Richard the Younger, who came up with ' a retirement'.  Just shows that the yoof of today have no respect for their elders.

Prompted by Barry, I've been thinking - always a dangerous tendency of mine.  Next week, we should have all the copes on and be well on with site clearance.  But Wednesday 7th is also the date for our next AONB taster day which means Emma I, Elaine and David can't be there.  Catriona is also away and  I recall someone else saying they couldn't make it. 

My proposal is therefore that we skip next week and invite everyone who can make it to a topping out ceremony on 14th September with cake and fizz provided.  Although I know the Trust is planning to celebrate our achievement at some stage, it seems a more fitting end to the project if as many folk as possible can make the final work day even if it ends by lunchtime.  I'll probably do some tidying up in the meantime and, if anyone particularly wants to work next week, we can get some of the copes on and make progress on site clearance.  Let me know what you think, especially if you still want to turn up next week.  Unless there's a barrage of objections, we'll put completion off for a week.

Nearly there people, nearly there!

On we go and up she comes ...

Another week, another blog.  Two sorries to start this week.  First to anyone who didn't show up on Wednesday because I forgot to e-mail and second for the slight delay in blogging.  There can't be many takers for the first apology since we had up to ten people on the wall this week - Roger, Phillip, Catriona, Graham, Ian, David, a brace of Richards, Andrea from the village and, of course, your illustrious chairman.

Sterling work again from all members.  The Richards will persist in making perfect copes and who are we to discourage them?  The rest of us now have all the 3" courses in place and have even begun to put the final 2" courses on. 

David and I have agreed that the wall end is in need of some remediation.  It seems to have slipped (we can't possibly have built it like that!) so we'll tackle it next week while the rest move on with the top courses.

In an idle moment, someone asked what the collective noun for a group of wallers ought to be.  We offered 'batter' (already used for fish fryers) and 'course' (or maybe coarse) but we should be able to do better than that.  Suggestions please with 'a prize' for the best suggestion.

Project North Stainley ought now to be finished on schedule (given precisely as September-October-ish) but there is a lot of clearing up to do.  All the spare stone above 2" thickness needs to be cleared back to the garden entrance for disposal so that we can get the ground prepared for autumn planting.  We made a start but there's lots more barrowing to do.  Just think how good it will look after we've tidied up!

See you next week!

Walling on 17th August

Determined not to get behind again so here's todays' summary.

A select band of five on the wall today - Tony, Paul, Catriona, Chris and Ian. 

A warm and sometimes sunny day which gave us a great opportunity to give the wall more altitude.  We finished the 4" course and first 3" course and are about half way round the bend with the second 3" course. 

And, yes, we did produce some more copes and Richard the Elder has promised to crack on with more next week.  Meantime, here's a couple of photos for the record.

This blogging lark is easy enough once you get started ... innit?

Hmmm ... no posting on the blog since May 18th eh?  Still not much has happened really has it?  I mean we only started about here ...

well, all right ... here ...

and now we're ... here. 

 

  

Wall 1 is finished, done and dusted and awaits the arrival of Lady Camilla who will allegedly take her seat as queen of the garden sometime this month.

We finally concluded that, in true walling style, we weren't going to have enough stone or that, if we did, it wasn't the right kind (whenever is it?) for making coping stones.  So we threw ourselves on the mercy of our suppliers and asked for some nice 3" to 4" lumps for the purpose. 

What arrived was near double that size and, shall we say, tricky to work into copes.  So we got another lot which this time resembled a heap of broken paving slabs but at least had the advantage of being more workable. 

We ( OK, I) suspect that the stone we would have liked, was delivered instead to a team of professionals who, in four weeks, built several impressive stretches of new wall on the A59 road between Harrogate and Skipton.  Nice job guys, but can we have our stone back please?

We've since learned how to break the big stuff into useful building stone and Wall 2 has been gaining altitude encouragingly as a result.  We 're up to about 24" so far, and if the gang turns out in the same kind of numbers we've been achieving lately, we should meet our completion deadline of Septemberish, although at this stage we're not prepared to specify a year.

We've found the project quite challenging but we're feeling quietly pleased with the end result.  Keeping a good line and batter on a curved wall takes some getting used to but we've all been prepared to admit when something has gone astray and accept a bit of remediation.

By the way ... here's our wildlife monitoring crew hard at work (Attenborough, for a change, is just out of shot)



and here's the result of minutes of painstaking and patient study ...



Awwww!

And finally in the spirit of globalisation and understanding among nations, here's how they build dry stone walls in Turkey ... the whitewash gives me an idea for finishing the North Stainley wall ...  I wonder what colour Farrow & Ball would recommend ... ?