Drystane Dyking

When I got back from the National Stone Centre (see previous entry below) I had another look at the Oatridge College web site and noticed that their course was eligible for ILA funding (i.e. you can get a grant towards the cost), and when I contacted them to ask about this I found out that there had been a cancellation on their five-day course in mid-June. So I bagged the place there and then (I got the ILA funding as well eventually, though I would still have done the course without it).
Oatridge specialises in landbased education, so they do agriculture, equine studies, animal care, greenkeeping (they have their own golf course), landscaping, countryside management, horticulture, etc. It's situated on a farm (which is run as a commercial farm, as well as being a training facility), and they have their own dry stone walls to play with - this is our field, complete with dry stone wall.

The course was pretty much more of the same as the National Stone Centre one, with the addition of half a day of theory in a classroom at the start. It was taught by Richard Love, who is the chairman of the Dry Stone Walling Association. A couple of the other attendees (potentially confusingly both called Davy) actually worked in the college, in the landscaping department. It turned out I knew one of them from school, 20+ years ago ... small world, as they say ...

Foundations in ...

Building up to the through level ('first lift'):

And this time the throughs all went on at the same height.


It was very hot on a couple of days ... well, very hot for Scotland - mid 20s, certainly very hot to be lugging tons of stone about in a field with no shade. The wall ran nearly due north-south, so it gave no shade either.

Second lift complete:

And on go the copes.

In all we did about 20 meters of wall over the five days.

It felt like a lot, but it's only about half the speed a professional might expect to achieve.