Wednesday 12th October INDOORS
The archiving team has started work on the Phase III documents from 1997 onwards, listing all the site SMCs and opening the photo files. The Bunkhouse was cleaned for a forthcoming weekend booking.
OUTDOORS
Nenthead autumn has arrived – mist,raining and cold. So naturally we chose to go and stand in the river. Before we started work, tools and concrete had to be transported in Alec’s Range Rover to the track above the waterfall, and lowered down to the river in two stages. Peter managed to drop three buckets and one was written off.
In the river, we were glad to see that last week’s work had survived and the water flow was 12 inches below the old intake pipe.. The leaking wall was packed with hessian bags filled with postcrete and an occasional shovel of river gravel. Our technique was improved by soaking the hessian bags in the river before they were filled with the dry mix. We had about ten minutes to insert and tamp each bag before the concrete started to go off – this required that the team knelt, crouched and almost laid in the river water – and it was raining. Lunch break came early today. All our tools were left on site.
The afternoon shift was marred by the loss of a shovel during our lunch break- did it go down the river, or was it stolen? Very sadly, we decided that it was probably stolen. Clearing up the site, we installed rock armour at the base of the retaining wall.
Back at The barracks, we moved the remaining rubbish into a skip and freed up more space on the ground floor.