On Friday morning, the day before the 150th Highland Games in Victoria, six of us arrived at the park to begin assembling the random Basalt stone for the Celtic Cross were are building this weekend.
We sorted the stones, erected the batter frames, laid out the string lines and sank the large 250 pound dimensional stone which would be the main upright of the Celtic Cross into the earth.
The stone slab looked a bit like a grave stone so we held a mock funeral for the guy who originally started the Dry Stone Wall Association of Canada
Later on, after a lot of problem solving concerning voussoirs and angles and centering placement, the guys did a little dance gesturing where the proposed Celtic Cross stone circle was going to be built.
At the end of yesterday we completed this much of the circle and were pretty pleased with the progress. (Hope we haven't used up all the good stones)
We are ready to add the horizontal cross slabs now and then begin the top half of the dry stone circle which will complete the Celtic Cross and then we will leave it here on display during the duration of the rest of the Highland Games. Counter intuitively and rather mysteriously the top half of the circle is always much easier to build than the bottom half. Some of you might know why.
