Thursday was so special that it gets its own blog entry (or Phil wasn’t out and so hasnt a clue what happened). Today we we’re installing 3 picnic benches at Colinton Dell to replace the plastic ones that had thoughtfully been burnt down to make room for them. Thankfully these ones were metal and should provide more resistance. We got to the site quite late on account of picking up the tables from the Hermitage of Braid and loading to them on to our rarely used trailer. This put Chris’ driving skills to the test down the narrow tracks and sharp bends around the Hermitage but he successfully managed to navigate all obstacles and got us to Colinton safely.
We split the group into two teams, one who would be installing two of the tables and the other who would be playing the role of vandals and removing a third plastic table which needed replacing. Installing the tables was a relatively simple job, digging the holes for each leg, checking the level, and then packing with rocks and cementing them into place. So much so that the two tables were in by lunchtime. The ‘vandal’ team were having a few more issues getting the plastic table out as we had’nt brought any screwdrivers, and so resorted to heavy pinchbars and brute force.
A late lunch was made even later as we were left waiting a while for Chris who had taken the van back to the Hermitage to collect the third table (its only a small trailer after all), and with him had gone everybodys lunch. When he finally did arrive back we set up lunch at two very new looking picnic tables which somebody had clearly just installed and enjoyed the fruits of our labours…for about 10 minutes until the wind become so strong that most people made for the refuge of the van to warm up a bit (and keep their lunches safe from passing dogs).
After lunch, we installed the final bench, repaired a section of fence, which took less than an hour so adept had we become at installing benches, so with jobs running short we even put our hand to a bit of path resurfacing and thats how we ended another week with BTCV.