Land Manager's Diary: Read it here>

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It was a blustery day up at Friend’s of the Lake District’s Mazonwath land yesterday where we were with the volunteers dry stone walling. We were joined by some people eager to learn the art and skill of dry stone walling and also by the Westmorland Dales apprentice team and Area Ranger Callum.

It was great to have such a big age range, all keen to get to grips with the challenges of walling. The challenges yesterday were indeed huge! We have come to a section of the wall we are rebuilding that seemed to be built of huge slabs or chunks of limestone, one on top of the other.

The first debate was whether we had the strength to actually move the stones and was it safe to do so. This has to be set against the fact that if we left them in situ that section of the wall would be off line and on one side had a lot of holes under the stones!

Persuaded by Callum’s enthusiasm but perhaps more importantly strength whilst he was with us for the morning we took them all off and started from scratch.

It was brilliant to have volunteer and Dry Stone Walling Association trainer John back with us, providing practical but expert guidance on tricky issues.