Well, here we are again: on an extremely cold day in late November, but a day which was significantly milder than the week preceeding it! I forgot to take my camera to the last work party (whoops!) and we made a lot of progress along the wall: here's the length of wharf wall that had been completed:
And here is our task for today, should we choose to accept it: finish off this section of wall, get all the coping stones in place (with thanks to the Monday Work Party for putting them all neatly ready for us) and backfill with broken bits of stone, concrete, and then soil on top.  Right! Let's get that mixer started then. Oh dear, only one bloke stood around watching - will it work? 
Hmm, well that was easy! Obviously it recognises Roy as being Engine Master. 
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Here's Bob, fiddling around with something..... come on Bob,we're waiting to get brick-laying! 
Alistair watches while Roy tells Vic exactly where to put the coping stone. 
Meanwhile Steve and James are foraging for useful stones in the pile of mud. It rather looks as though Steve is doing most of the work.... only joking, James!
You can make up your own captions for this one! Something to do with the orange string not being in line with the coping stones, possibly?  |
So, much later in the day, here we are! Big excitement, only one more stone to lay!!
Are we all ready then? Gather round chaps, this is the big moment! Phil, stop shovelling that muck around ("and by the way, does your head go to all the way to the top of that hat?") 
And triumphantly, Roy hits it with a rubber hammer and yes! We are finished!! 
Er - are we finished? Worried looks all round, but nothing serious, just a little bit of packing required at the back. Come on Jim, shove in that flat piece. 
Stage Directions: Trowel is handed from off-stage: 
And Roy and Steve do the top pointing on the final stone. 
Shivering with the cold, everyone gets out a camera to record the historic event. Look, there's Doug on the far right - hi Doug! 
And as the sun begins to set, Roy finishes the pointing. 
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And finally for this report, some views of our favourite stones: this is one of the original rubbing stones, carefully repositioned and re-set:
This is the far western edge of the Wharf, showing the newly-flattened cut with the narrow drainage channel to the left. By spring, this will no longer look quite such a wreck! 
Here is Jim's personalised stone with his initials, JB, and the date. 
and here is my stone, with my initial in it - that's meant to be an R in case you can't quite read it! 
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Well, here ends our largest engineering-type job to date. There will still be some tidying and landscaping to do, and it will be some time before we get water right up to the wall, but we are all extremely pleased with our work. We just hope that the rebuilt Wharf lasts as long as the first one did!
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