Hadrian's Dry Stone Walling Course July 2009 at Silkstone Common

For the first time since we started the dry stone walling courses at Silkstone Common we had bad weather! It persisted it down most of Sunday but it did nothing to dampen the spirits or the walling skills of the students on the course!


Here we are at the start of the course in the Station Inn going through the theory i.e. health and safety, history of walling, techniques etc while drinking cups of tea provided by Mark and Julie the landlords of our local pub.

Theory completed it's down to Nabs Wood to start putting in the foundations.

Day one complete it was time to adjourn to the Station Inn for a well earned pint or two and then onto the Chilli Lodge for what proved to be a superb curry. Abdul and his staff certainly excelled themselves that night and impressed our budding dry stone wallers who had travelled far and wide to join us for the weekend.

Day two started with placing the throughstones into the wall just to chase the cobwebs away.

Barry isn't doing Tommy Cooper impressions he's explaining the method of using lapped throughstones.

We had a visitor half way through Sunday morning in between the showers. This is Dean and Bodie his new chocolate lab. Dean has been on several of our courses and likes to stay in touch with us and the courses we run which is great! That's perhaps the spirit behind why past course members, professional wallers - and people who have just become attached to us (how good is that??!!!) gather together and join the current course members at the Chilli Lodge on the Saturday evenings of our courses which is a really good night!

Despite the rain we still managed to have a laugh, even when the water started running down my back!

L to R: Sandra, Samantha, Ruth, Andrew, Nigel and Paul

Yet again we have been SO lucky to meet such lovely people who it was a pleasure to teach and spend the weekend with!

With thanks to the smashing folk on this course, Mark and Julie at the Station Inn, David Compton of Westfield Equestrian Centre for donating the stone to make the course possible, Barry Heeley of High Hoyland Dry Stone Walls for his help and support even though he's not been a well teddy bear of late and the good folk of Silkstone Parish who support me in my efforts to re-wall Nabs Wood.

Hadrian's visit the land of Jason and the Argonauts

I had the great pleasure of visiting Volos, Greece along with my wife Susan and her colleague 'Griff' and his good lady 'B'. The mission was to audit and invigilate exams at Lavender International's partner company TQCC.

Volos lies 320km north of Athens on the coast of the Aegean. It's a port and a ferry terminal to the Greek Islands and was the departure point for the Argos crewed by Jason and his brave band of heroes on their quest to find the Golden Fleece (http://www.mythweb.com/heroes/jason/). Mount Pelion which towers above Volos, is also the mythological home of the Centaurs although we didn't see any on this visit.

We stayed in the Xania Hotel situated right on the waterfront and which turned out to be a lovely place to stay with nice staff and great facilities.






Aftera long, long journey and a wash up and brush up we met our hosts who took us to a nearby village for Tipparoo (my spelling). Tipperoo is a spirit which is quite like a mild version of Ouzo but the bonus being is that when you order a Tipperoo you also get a small dish of food. With each Tipperoo ordered more food is served - fantastic! This was the beginning of some of the most fantastic hospitality by our hosts Athena, Dimitris, Marita and Paulis which must have been very tiring for them but which was, and is, greatly appreciated.







B and Susan relax after a hard days work

A memorable part of our trip was a visit to Mount Pelion which towers above Volos for a meal with our hosts. The views were terrific and the villages were just fantastic. As a dry stone waller I really appreciated these villages and their buildings which are beautiful and a work of art.

The Ladies L to R Marita, Susan, B and Athena

I would just like to thank Athena, Marita, Dimitris and Paul for their hospitality, patience and time to make our visit wonderful and I hope I can return the favour some day. Also a huge thank you to Michael, the MD of TQCC who has not been well of late and was unable to join us.

L to R: Dimitris, Susan, B, Griff, Athena, Paul and Mirita

Our June Dry Stone Walling Course at Nabs Wood Silkstone Common

First of all my apologies for not posting these photo's and videos earlier but I've been so busy (some of my busy-ness (if there's such a word!) will be posted onto this site when I get the time!) creating a beautiful retaining wall at the recording studio of Pure Records http://www.purerecords.net/ (Kate Rusby's own label) and now teaching the young folk with special needs at the Pennine Camphill Community http://www.pennine.org.uk/ .

Here we go then for the June course. As usual we had a course full of wonderful people and we had a great laugh. We had a splendid meal at the Chilli Lodge on the saturday night followed up by severe southe westerlies from Justins bottom on Sunday!

It was unusual to have two father and son teams on the course - Roy and Matt and Justin and Jason who are in the process to emigrate to Oz - lucky, lucky people!!!

Another great course with smashing people!

L to R: Barry, Justin, Jacob, Mike, Charles, Matthew, Roy and Matt