We arrived on site today with bated breath - were the caravans still there? They had - gone ! Phew.... We were all ready for a giant tidy up session, recovering the bricks that had been scattered about the field, but, oh joy, some kind people had already done that, and stacked the bricks on our side of the fence. Thanks, guys ! The big stone block was also back in front of the gate by which the caravans had gained entry, so all is well again.
This left us with just 1 1/2 pallets of bricks remaining in the field to move round to the platform, thus removing what we had parked there temporarily and stacking it all ready for use at the coal face. Your scribe, and later Keith and Chris handled this, and even cleaned the bricks of the crumbly mortar inside. In the end, we didn't lose any bricks (we think) but just had to gather them all up again.

It was a rather smaller team today, between 5 and six (depends on when you count them) but brick laying proceeded regardless. Manning wasn't helped when your scribe was unexpectedly called away half an hour after he arrived on site. Through Bishops Cleeve twice in the rush hour, with an additional queue by a temporary traffic light for a new gas main. Great.
In the picture above, we can see Bob laying a row of blocks on the 120m stretch, with Paul spooning in the mortar. This went surprisingly quickly, allowing Bob to move on to the next task of brick laying. Keith is just off to fetch another block from elsewhere on the site. The logistics of this job...endless.
After laying the blocks, Bob put down two courses of blues on the same section, and a course of reds behind. You can see the reds stacked on the blues in front.

On the 110m section, JC (in the distance) laid the final row of facing blues and then moved back to the start to lay the first row of corbelling on top of it. Brilliant ! John O and Keith also helped keep the mortar coming, a job that gets easier and easier as we slowly build our way back to the mixer. Or so I say, not having wheeled any of it today.

Pete also came along and helped JC with backing up. Paul, in the red in the picture above, also did some backing up, so we had up to four brick layers today, which meant a lot of mortar was required. Here is John O, off on another mortar run.
At the end of the day, Bob managed to erect a pier at the end of the 130m section (along which we laid a concrete foundation course to get the level right last week) so when we return next Monday, we can lay a first course of bricks along here too.
Look at the completed stretch of platform behind JC in the picture above ! Haven't we come a long way, it vanishes away into the distance.
We were happy to receive a visit from the Chairman today, and understand that he too was impressed. Happiness all round.
But come and join us next week, we were a bit thin on the ground today.