The week started at Redhall Walled Garden, under sunny skies and digging out grass sods to re-establish a path which runs around a small nature area to the rear of the Walled garden.
The weather stayed nice and sunny and apparently Alan went paddling in the burn looking for pebbles??for some inexplicable reason???
Wednesday was spent back at Redhall Walled Garden, in the boiling hot sunshine that you get in autumn. Task was to continue to dig up the turf of the old path, dig down to the liner layer (if it could be found) and then cover with some fragrant wood chips – that smelt of car air freshner. It was a suprisingly small group out – possibly due to the nice weather – although everybody was claiming ‘illness’. So we arrived on site and set to work; Alan and Chris tackling the step replacement required, whilst everyone else digging back the grass….some cutting it in to neat shapes and others ‘just’ rolling it back. This was pleasant in the morning, for we were under the shadow of some large trees, with just a few midges for interest.
By the afternoon the sun had really come out and it was really HOT! Barrowing the woodchip started…..made entertaining by everybody trying not to pick the ‘new’ squeaky wheelbarrow – which was made all the more complicated as it was impossible to distinguish from the other new non-squeaky wheelbarrow. Whoever was ‘lucky’ enough to get the wheelbarrow, their presence was announced from which ever side of path they approached from, from a good mile or so away.
On Thursday we headed out to the Hermitage of Braid to do a variety of tasks: burning a large pile of ‘waste’ wood, re-applying some whindust to some steps and moving large logs from A to B. Thanks to Pat and Martin for getting a good fire started, and to Sheila, Stuart and Derek for lugging the logs from the bays. Truely an excellent fire which kept going well past lunch. 
In the afternoon, Fiona took most of the group to play ‘pick up sticks’ – shifting logs to prevent access to some of the paths which were damaged in a landslip. A reasonably early finish as John, Derek and myself had been thoroughly smoked by the fire and it was also a considerably warm day.
To view photos of past and present projects, click here