You make your own walls

You make your own walls - a maxim of mine. The only thing that stops you from doing something is you. Of course setting out to do something doesn't mean you'll succeed - but trying is a whole lot better than finding excuses not to try. This is something I need to keep remembering - there's a host of reasons why I'm not doing the things I could be doing - but they are walls of my own making.

We had a wall collapse in July and at the weekend Mike, who'd arrived with Sho and Kieron and Rachel from Edinburgh, was very keen to re-build it. He did this - almost single handedly. It's a fine effort and he taught me the basics of dry stane dyking in the process. Experts amongst you will spot the deficiencies of course - but as the first wall I've ever helped to build I'm pretty pleased. According to Mike the best way to test if a wall is sound is to walk along it. So here he is modestly proving the worth of his work.

It is a good job - and all we could achieve in the time - but it will only last so long. To do it properly would have meant dismantling a much larger section of the wall and when we looked at doing this we couldn't see where it would end - so we took the short term way out. I wonder if we'll regret this sooner than we think.

My consolation is the thing wasn't built properly in the first place - so if it does collapse earlier than we wish it probably was going to do so anyway. When we removed all the rubble we found the wall had been built directly onto the turf - no hint of a foundation trench at all.

But building this short snatch of wall doesn't half make you realise how skilled proper dykers are. I'll never walk past a dry stane dyke again without marvelling at the beauty of the straight lines.