A day with distractions, as you will see. With a temperature of 5 degrees this morning, it was just about warm enough to lay bricks, and 7 of us got going in good spirits. It quickly became apparent that the icy northerly wind was exactly in line with the cutting, exposing us to a biting wind that left our teeth chattering.

The first job of the day was to lay that strip of concrete on the 180m section. JC decided to give John O a hand - that mixer had a mind of its own, and kept turning away by itself. Yours truly and John O then shovelled in all the aggregate from two dumpy bags, counting off the shovel fulls as we went - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 - stop! Bob W then followed with cement directly from the bag, creating a huge cloud of white swirling dust (cough).

There's something very satisfying about pouring cement, and the distance from the mixer was only 30yds or so, so the strip filled pretty quickly.

A large black cloud then appeared on the horizon, and we thought, this is the moment to retire for a cup of tea in the cabin.

10 minutes later the sun was out again, and we find JC corbelling on a strip, the number of which I will not reveal, as I was rapped across the knuckles for getting one wrong last time! Suffice it to say that he completed this one, leaving a third and last row to go on two sections. If we do that, we can tick off two more sections completed, the first since January 5th. Have we done nothing since then?

We had four brick layers on the go today, which promised much progress. Two on the front, and two on the back, which meant a delicate balancing act with the mortar supply. Who would want another load first - you have to anticipate back there by the container. Along came a load of black for Bob and JC, but - it was rejected! Too grey. Oh no! The grey was then ordered to become brown, and here we see Brian shovelling it into the 'brown' barrow, for use on the backing up.
On investigation into the deviation from the specified colour, it appears that while John O is indeed very consistent with his mixes, Fairview changed the colour of the sand, and the current load is so yellow that it takes three jam jars of black powder, instead of the usual one, to make a black mix. You learn.

As an interlude, JC decided to level out a stretch of lineside with a mini digger. This is required to store the new platform slabs, which have now been ordered. They will be delivered on 23rd March.
The MO for placing them is to hire in a road/railer with a hydraulic arm and a small trailer, and to lay as many of the slabs as we can in a whole working week as soon as we have finished brick laying. At a rough guess, we have another 12 working (Mon-)days to complete the platform wall, so slab laying will take place sometime after that.

As the temperature was dropping, rather than rising during the day, JC decided to try his hand at backing up. This is therefore a very rare picture, and those reds are certainly expertly laid. Pity no one will be able to tell....
There were two distractions today, which meant we didn't get quite as much done as we had hoped. Firstly, Tony kept stopping to stare at something:

You know what it's like, when one person starts to stare, the others want to know what he's looking at. Was it the Cheltenham Area group? The new Trust chairman with a cheque? P&O out for its first run?

No it was: (rumble)

The pride and joy of the RAF, their very own brand new Airbus A400 transport plane, just out of its box! It appears we have one, and only one, and here it is, flying circles round CRC:

The new Airbus was doing circuits and bumps on Staverton airfield, banking sharply over Cleeve hill before having another go. The trouble was, every time the damned thing flew by, there was a clatter of tools falling to the ground and work ground to a halt. Coo, look, there it goes again.

Bob too had a good day, laying two courses of blues, and setting out the next rows of blues on the newly concreted 180m stretch, and even the penultimate stretch at 190m. (which John O is passing).

Here's the end of the day shot - that little pile of bricks is a tower on the 190m and penultimate section, to allow the first row of blues to be laid here next time. OK, we are close to the end, but as explained earlier in this post, there is a lot more brick laying to go before we have finished with the wall.

Hang on, the sun is shining, why the 'end of the day' ?
Looking down the trackbed, I suddenly realised I couldn't see Hunting Butts tunnel any more, how come?
A hailstorm, that's why! Would you believe it. Before we knew it, millions of white pellets rained upon us, and all over our work.. We ran about with cloth and polythene, trying to cover up the work we had done. In minutes, the whole platform area was a sea of white.

The temperature plummeted, and it became too cold to do anything further. We even had to send back a newly made barrow of mortar, which Brian is heaving back in this picture.

Here is the same Brian, tramping back towards the cabin on the crunchy hail particles. It looks like he is just completing a major treck through the snow. And can you see Cleeve Hill? No, neither could we, it had vanished in the blizzard.

Damned - that was trap - let's try that one over there...

And yes, the mouse count has now reached 14, and rising. Thought we'd won, last week. 'Fraid not. Time to sweep out the droppings again.

See you next time !