The weather has warmed up just a bit, so back to brick laying today - at last! The expected rental of mini digger / dumper today failed to materialise, as none were available to rent. Business must be booming out there, in the construction industry. So, making a virtue of a necessity, we resumed brick laying, with Bob and JC out front on corbelling, and Tony at the rear laying reds to back them up.

In our opening shot today you can see the 170m section, newly supplied with blocks, being unveiled ready for a little light brick laying.Two rows were laid on this today. Ready stacks are waiting trackside.

Bob and JC had a good bash at the corbelling, and did two rows in line on the 150 / 160m sections. We can only lay one row at a time, and then it has to set, before doing another one on top. So 1 row = 1 week. On the other hand, it does mean that in 2 weeks time these two section should be finished. Then, only 2 more whole rows to go, and one slope.
Here we see JC coming to the end of the 160m row of corbelling, first course of the three required.

Behind the corbelling, the reds were being readied for backing up. With all the wind and rain we have had, water has trickled in (somehow) despite the sheeting and now sits in all the holes.

We have two ways of dealing with this - with a battery tester, a glass tube with a bulb on the end, and as here, John O with a rubber tube and human suction. This actually worked a treat, but there were many, many holes....

When John O had finished, Tony began to lay the last few reds we have (we will have to finish in blues, as we still have lots of them) and to do this, he has his own barrow of mortar. He used it all up by the end of the day.

In the background you can see an extension of the platform drain recently laid, and filled with pea gravel. In fact we were waiting for Tony to finish working at this spot, in order to make the drain even longer.

Pea gravel was a big issue today. We have a 10 - 15ton pile of it behind the box, and following a request from the race course, we need to shift it and the infill we had ready there to somewhere else - any where in fact ! The pea gravel was removed in two ways - firstly, by infilling as much extra drain as we could lay without getting in the brick layer's way, and secondly....

... by shoveling the whole pile into dumpy bags, in which it could be removed safely to elsewhere on site. Get shoveling, lads ! What a way to start the day.

After much bent over shoveling, we had filled 16 (!) bags, which you can see here waiting to be picked up by the contractor. A small pile remained at the end, and we used this to complete the filling of the drain troughing behind the wall. In the background, you can see the shape of the new CRC grandstand. It's a huge building, and it means more customers for both the race course, and ourselves. Great!

Once all 16 dumpy bags had been filled, it (annoyingly) became apparent that in order to complete the pea gravel fill behind the wall, we needed just a few barrows more. Where to get this pea gravel, but out of the bags we had just filled ! Derrick and John O did this without (much) complaint, luckily it was only half a dozen barrows full or so. When we come back next week, this area will have been cleared, and our bags will be somewhere along the top of the cutting. At least they will be mobile, in principle. There are also still 12 stacks of blues up there.

In the middle of the day a delegation from Toddington came down to inspect the slagstone wall, still in place after the regrading of the overfull cutting slope above, now cleared. The slope looks so much better now; all that remains to do is a repair of the part of the wall that collapsed under the excessive weight above, now gone.

After lunch, a brief interlude of merriment. When he arrived first thing this morning, John O found the gate locked. Not wanting to block any other traffic, he thought it would be a good idea to park the car off road. It wasn't a good idea! Luckily JC was there to pull him out with the truck.

Our final shot of the day shows the wall advancing towards the end, and in the foreground is the long newly laid drain, with pea gravel infill. We now have to fill in the back with spoil, so that we can raise the scaffolding boards, and add a second fill of pea gravel on top. That will be for another day, when a dumper can bring some material in.

Mice caught : One today, the other trap sprung but no catch. Three traps set tonight :-)
10 caught so far.
There's definitely less mouse poop on the floor now, but they do also run around on the table, and that is where Derrick spilled a jar of instant coffee granules today. This was discreetly scooped back into its jar.... the 5 second rule applying here, we presume. I think I'll stick to tea for now.