Sunday, 23 June 2013

St Kilda - Sunday 23 June

The work progresses apace. Weather not great - cool, windy and damnp with the cloud hanging rond at just over 600 feet. We have now had a tour of the village - Kevin the St Kilda archaeologits walked us through the archaeology, occasionally stopping to point out tools which could quite easily be prehistoric.

Here Jo "escapes from an Iron Age Souterraine. These structures, probably for storage, can be found throughoiut the north and west of Scotland (google it!)










Soay lambs are looking good as they are still frisky and cle3an - as with domesticated sheep, the lambs form wee gangs which go marauding in the village area. They like trying to east anything, including Ranete's jacket!



Work continues apace - major work on cleit roofs and wall tumbles, but also ongoing repais to the fabric of buildings - here Paul carries out a temporary repair to the door frame of Cottage No 1 (our living room/dining room/kitchen)

 The Church (built 1829) and School room (1898) have been deep cleaned - it is noce to see people enjoying the work - a moment of great hilarity while tactics are discussed with (L - R) Jana, Jo and Janice.

One job is to sand, repair where we can, then paint the outside wood and metal work of the Church and School room - this need to repair outside woodwork is a reflection of the severity of the conditions on ST KIlda - wet and very wiondy - wood needs repainted fairly frequently, and replacing everything with PVC would not please Historic SCotland or look good on Britain's only Double World Heritage site!


As well as scraping out old paint, Ken found time to go back to school to practice his writing (he only got 4/10 for this exercise)

As well as working, we walk! ANd one of the first thingo to do is get poeple use to the St Kilda meaning of "vertical"!.. Here one member of our party stande on top of the Mistress Stone - more of vertical later!  We managed to get 7 of the party on to this stone (one at a time of course)
A couple arrived yesterday to camp for 4 dats - they are joining us this evening for dinner (being served 15 mins ago!!). Dinner calls

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