31st August could be the beginning of autumn. Sheila, Liz and Joyce were touring the valley rooting out thistles with our new easy-pulling device when they spotted the autumn gentians. The sun was hidden behind a cloud and the gentians were being shy, but we saw several swathes of gentians on the grassy areas.  The flowers have grown well this year due to the absence of sheep.  A solitary heron was cruising up and down the river below the waterfall.

Autumn Gentian

Indoors, Steve, ColinW and Pete were completing the shelves in the storeroom and then sorting through all our boxes of  screws and nails inherited from the old NPHT. Funny how the volume shrinks when you get them all tidied and shelved!  ColinW has also installed hooks and racks for the hand tools – you can now get that shovel without a pile of tools landing on your feet. Progress was good and at the end of the afternoon we were sweeping the Barracks floor to make a clean space for the Eimco. One of the winter jobs is to clean down the Eimco and start conservation work.

The tedious job of scraping, puttying and cleaning the window frames also got some time. The bulk of this task is complete – Carrs Mine shop and some Barracks windows need some primer and top coat before we can claim to have finished. The small window in the Workshop gable has a pretty good glass frame but the surrounding frame is badly rotten. Some filler will keep it weathertight until next year but it looks like a new frame will be required.

We aim to clean out the very last of the rubbish this year and a skip is on order.