For a while now we have been holding four pallets of West Coast slate at the front of the castle. With the ongoing preparation for clearance of the building we needed to use them. The problem was not the slates we could use, but those we couldn’t. Because these were recovered from buildings on which they’d been in use for over 50 and sometimes 120 years, many of them had started to delaminate. Others had not fared so well in transit, being chipped and cracked. After sorting we had over 500 slates left. What to do?
Well, for a while now the local buses have been using the drivehead to turn and they have been recently upgraded to a size, maybe 15% bigger, meaning that both of our standing stones were vulnerable to a slipped clutch, overeager throttle or just bad driving. We noted big bus tire tracks within inches of the bigger one around which everyone turns. Something had to be done, and the slates provided the solution.
For the last couple of weeks Mike, our local neighbourhood man of all trades, has been turning the unuseable into something rather splendid. All that remains is to finish off the area inside the larger curb and we’ll start looking very tidy.
