Saturday 18th November
Skip passed the draining the pit of despair and jump straight to the focus of this work party - shaping the hardstanding and progress the pit of despair.
Two jobs were planned for today:
- Beginning to shape the hardstanding inside the gates so it would start to rise beyond the swing of the gates;
- Trying to complete the brickwork on the catchpit.
To create the rise beyond the swing of the gates key pieces of hard core were levelled so that a timber straight edge could be used to select the right thickness of hard core in between. This became a painstaking effort akin to a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle and you did not even know if you had all the pieces.
Building up the level of the catchpit was much easier as every brick is the same size. Unfortunately we ran out out of sand one course of bricks from the top.
We did manage a couple of bonus jobs. After months of just pushing the drop bolts on the gate down into the mud we set two steel tubes into the ground under the main gate, a much more satisfactory solution. John did a little experimenting with the hard core and realised that we could use some of the smaller pieces to extend the hard standing at the east end of the compound.
