Friday, June 10, 2011

Deeside Walling

Oliver Mcleod is wondering how we are going to fix this Deeside style dry stane dyke at Birkhall at Balmoral in Scotland. It will need to be completely taken apart and rebuilt. Norman has left us to see what can be done while he takes the others to the Lochnagar distillery.

Here is the same section of wall about 3 hours later nearly ready for the copes. Jackie is putting on one of the last stones. This kind of squared granite wall is a lot more difficult to build that one might imagine. Even the slightest variance of height between adjacent stones can throw off the line of coursing. The batter is maintained by stepping back rather than having the faces of the stones lean in slightly. There are very few extra stones to choose from.

Well done team , though I wonder if Norman is being polite when he says he is pretty pleased with the progress we made. Now off to Loch Muick to inspect some other walls and certainly appreciate better the work that goes into building these types of walls.

Here are all of us on the Canadian walling tour having a group photo-op moment at the sunken garden at Balmoral Castle. We would like to say we helped Norman build this one too, but no.

Tomorrow the first day of the Irish part of our journey will be documented. We are staying on Inisheer Island one of the three Aran Islands off the west coast.