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.