Merry Christmas!

May I wish you all a merry Christmas and all the best for 2010.

This festive (?!) photo of myself and Jayne was taken after we'd finished a repair to a wall today in Southowram near Halifax.

Our logo uncovered! Hadrian in the flesh!

I've been asked soooooooooooooooo many times about my logo for Hadrian's Dry Stone Walls. No it's not Sid James from "Carry on Walling"

The truth is that the influence for our name of Hadrian's Dry Stone Walls came from my wife Susan, and our logo from the beautiful bust which my mate Pete had made and painted. I like influence and I like busts so it was a done deal!!

So here we are isn't this figurine fantastic?!! It's now in our possession and I can only say a HUGE thank you to Pete Watson for this work of art which will always be revered a treasured possession.

A Hadrian's Dry Stone Wall at the Pure Records Recording Studio - recording label for Kate Rusby

This is phase I of a multi phase project to build, repair and replace the dry stone walls around the beautifully located recording studios of Pure Records. While I was walling it was easy to be inspired listening to the lovely music of Kate Rusby and Damien O'Kane being made the studio above my head! The soundtrack is by Kate Rusby and is one of my favourites and never ceases to bring a tear to my eye as she sings it so beautifully. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Teaching Dry Stone Walling to the Pennine Camphill Community

I was aked to run a course for the young people with special needs at the Pennine Camphill Community in Wakefield (where I keep my bees!). I did this in July and the video below is the result.............

A dry stone walling challenge!

This was to be a great project which took some time to think about!



Nick and Tracey wanted to bring a certain character to their garden and they were pretty sure that dry stone walling could help them acheive the ambience they desired. Have a look at the video below and see what you think!

dry stone bridge - my garden project phase 12b

Just thought I'd pop this onto the blog. It's the latest phase of my garden project which has been ongoing for some time. It spans a storm ditch at the rear of my house adjacent to the Trans Pennine Trail in Silkstone Common. I'll post the full tale of the garden project later.


This is the driest the ditch has been since early May. It's been a foot deep in water and smelly sludge for most of the year making building a VERY difficult task.

With this part of my garden project I was assisted by the Hadrian's International Walling Team of Jalda (Germany), Gui (Brazil) and Dean (Cawthorn UK) - many thanks to them for their help.

Gui and Jalda

Play the video below for the exciting removal of the former when anything could have happened!!!!

......

Les

The camerawoman gets excited as Gui tests the bridge......

Gui

If you would like a dry stone bridge building give me a call on +44 (0)7952 551025 and I'll be pleased to discuss your requirements with you.

Hadrian's Dry Stone Walling Course at Hebden Bridge August 2009

This truly was a multi national course! Two ladies from Germany and a gentleman from Brazil - oh and Jim from Birmingham!! Four students for the Improvers Course and six for the Beginners Course.


As usual when Barry visits Hebden Bridge it was raining! Luckily I'd taken the precaution of buying a tunnel canopy for our course tent which was a God send as we spent quite a lot of time sheltering in there!

I'd like to title this photo - "Is it an ass or is it a horse" - you decide!

The photo's don't do justice to the amount of rain we had!

This is Jalda from Hannover contemplating walling over a hot cup of coffee.

We had a terrific meal on Saturday night where 13 of us sat down at the Olive Branch in Hebden Bridge. Oyuz and his staff served us with some brilliant special meals which were delicious. I'd thoroughly recommend a visit to the Olive Branch if you're in Hebden Bridge and tell them Les from Hadrian's Dry Stone Walls sent you!

We also had a look around the local pubs and the Hole Int Wall was great with live music and a good atmosphere.

This is Gui from Brazil suitably dressed for a British summer!

Suzi, originally from Nuremberg is seen here shaping stone to fit in the wall.

Another fantastic course and a couple of good nights out with some truly great people. Thank you to all the students on the course, Ann and John for accommodating us all at Riverdene House which was wonderful, Helen and Phil for letting us onto their land, the staff of the New Delight Colden for keeping us refreshed and Oyez and staff at the Olive Branch. Nearly forgot to say a big thank you to my co-instructor Barry Heeley!!

L to R: Barry, Joanne, Susi, Jalda, Gui, Gary, Jim, Roy, Matthew and yours truly (Justin and Jacob not in the picture)


And to finish off, a couple of video clips of the course in progress

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