A trip t' the Lakes!

This trip turned out to not really involve backpacking but was fun non-the-less, but more on that later! With much joy members of Ben Lairig descended on Eskdale with the idea of walking a few mountains and then sampling some Ale at the Boot beer festival. The idea was to backpack our way from Wynrose pass and wild camp after the event with Sundays walk depending on numerous factors not in the least how hung-over everyone was feeling.

Of course this being the first trip that the new committee was fully in charge of, fate had different plans. The trip up was pretty eventfull for some of us and the long and the short of it was that one car arrived about an hour after the other. This was particularly distressing as not only had we navigated Hard-Knott pass twice with no real cause we had also missed out on seeing ‘some chavs’ do doughnuts in the car park. With the night closing in, the weather set to turn and no one actually that keen it was decided to abandon the backpacking aprt of the trip, a plan that turned out to probably be a very good idea.

Camp was set up and tinnies were drunk. 4 members of the club had decided that tents were a hassle for this kind of trip and that bivving was the way to go, this was possibly a mistake when it started to rain heavily especially as I had bet Bance twenty pence that it wouldn’t. The rain continued in the morning which really slowed everyone’s movements as well as dampening their spirits (and everything else as well)

When it became apparent that the rain just wasn’t going to stop it was decided to just ‘Man Through’ and walk

We ascended Grey Friar with not a huge amount of joy and I quickly fobbed off any suggestion of me navigating, citing the fact that the day could already be hard enough without us getting lost in the bargin as well, Great Carrs and Swirl How were bagged in short order before we stopped for what has to have been one of the quickest and most uncomfortable lunch breaks I have ever had. Be now everyone seemed to have been struck by a strong sense of ‘how much more wet can we get’ and the route continued to have tops added to it.

Brim Fell was decided on and then Coniston Old Man as it was so close before finally Dow Crag rounded out the set. As we came off down towards the tarn the weather finally took pity on us and we had a quick much more pleasant second lunch in the sun before setting off the wrong way round the tarn and back to the car.

People continued to dry out in the wind back at the cars as we settled down to eat a quick dinner, the slop that Carrig and I prepared may have filled a whole but looked like it had already been eaten more than once. After varying degrees of sustenance we headed off to the main (for me at least) event, the beer festival.

We dumped the cars by a secluded spot and then headed on to the first pub, which while it was pretty rammed had a fair selection of beers on and space outside. After a couple there the coldness and the general slog of the day had set in so we moved onto the second pub in the actual village it’s self. I’ll be honest my memory gets hazy surprisingly fast but I remember this, it was warm and dry and had some very good beer on. After drinking our fill and beyond we were kicked out at 1.45 and set up for what was probably a very good night’s sleep in t’ outdoors. Not that I remember it, at all…. But it didn’t rain and the weather was clear when we awoke, this was good, we could get a good walk in and I no longer owed 20p to a certain former captain. After suddenly being struck by a sudden case of common sense Carrig and me headed off down the road were he managed to charm the local landlady into cooking breakfast for them. We rejoined the rest of the club and set off to the base of Harter Fell. Everyone must have been very hung-over or still drunk as it fell to me to navigate, which I did ok at with only one or two extra bits and more bog walking than was possibly needed.

Harter Fell was summited with a bit of scrambling and then we lunched and then headed towards Green Crag which we climbed up the side as opposed to the long path round before hacking straight down to the car and home!

All in all it was a great trip even in the face of adversity thanks to Ben Lairig’s ability to Man Up, some bloody good beer and good times!

Another busy week

Firstly I might as well give you my latest extract of field diary. You might notice that it’s a bit lazy and that’s because I really am rather knackered after such a long week!

Week 2 Field Diary
Things are going really well on site; we have shifted through the top soil and have reached things that could actually be called archaeological. I have made a pretty good find and the rest of my group have found 4 cobbled standings that could actually be the standing for a small building. All of this happened in the last two days of this week, the first two days being important but quite monotonous clearings of top soil.

I have been working in the very corner of my trench, pretty much on my own remit as Alex has let me dig a trench through the topsoil to see what was going on in it. At the very end of it in the corner there is some kind of pit that seems to be full of roman rubbish but time will have to tell on what it is exactly and how big/deep it is as all we managed to do on Friday was shift the top soil once it was decided that it was all pretty worthless. This took the whole day but by the end of it we can see some features and interactions in the soil.

Right, on a social aspect things are ticking along nicely, I had my first social as Social Sec on Wednesday and it was a really big success. Everyone had a great time and more importantly told me that it was as good as they expected it to be!

People are also on board with my plans for the rest of the term so that’s good. I might add some more to this later on in the weekend but its very very hot here and I have had a very busy week!

A busy week!

Updates

Gosh, what a week it has been! It really doesn’t feel like that long since my last update to you guys but looking back I have been so busy and a lot has happened to me so I guess it’s just best to jump in and update on what’s been going on!

Field work wise things have been quite hard going but very rewarding. There’s nothing quite like going to bed at the end of a long day of hard physical work, nor the end of a week were you feel that you have accomplished quite a lot.

On day one we were briefed on general site safety, procedure and practice and got stuck into getting some of the topsoil out of our trench, not a lot was ‘found’ in he typical sense of the first day but I felt it was valuable non the less to get my eye in to seeing the difference in soil levels (which is difficult) and to spot finds in the earth (which can be frustrating) The first day ended with me feeling muddy and sore but with a real sense of what archaeology was about.

Tuesday morning however I felt awful! I was sore all over and was still exhausted from the day before. Despite this I actually learnt a lot more and also got a lot deeper through the loam towards the sub soil and the actual finds. On that front today I found a piece of worked bronze, possibly an old broken broach as well as a fair bit of bone and Samian ware, however I did not feel that we were finding as much as we could that day compared to the other group working in our trench, possibly due to the fact that we were slightly above them in relation to finding the top of the sub soil. Unfortunately we were rained off by about 2 ‘o’ clock that day menai9ng we could not finish our drag bit of the top soil

Wednesday was a field trip which was informative and interesting however if I am totally honest I was not at my best that day as the coach journey was enough to lull me both into lethargy and then sleep due to the strenuousness of the two days before.

However the evening of that day was important for a totally non archaeological reason. It was Ben Lairig election nights. I won’t bore you with a blow buy blow (and to be honest I don’t remember it all at all) but the long and the short of it is that I am now the Social Sec for Ben Lairig! This couple with me being general Secretary for the new movie society I founded this year means I will be very busy socially next year!

Thursday was a shame and a washout as we were sent home at 11 due to torrential rain having only scraped back about half of what we needed to do.

Friday was a good day in all although my actual personal number of finds was close to none, enough that my section was checked about 3 times by varying members of the department before it was classed as ‘just empty’. That coupled with the fact that it was about a foot and a half above the beginnings of the sub soil and well above the rest of the trench meant that by the end of the day I was learned to dig a sub trench through it to see what it did.

In the interest of full disclosure I was very tired and possibly a bit disillusioned by this point so it was not the straightest piece in the world but I will tidy it up on Monday and also have shifted about half of it. Although today not the most inspiring day of my dig I feel it was the most important as I feel that I now know I could do this, even when it is frustrating!

So a busy but great week for me, one that I feel I might have grown and learnt more than any other apart from maybe my first week at York!

Keep on ticking by!

Socially it’s been a good week as well with two very decent nights out on Wednesday and Thursday, Ben Lairig and Nick’s birthday respectively. It was nice to relax after some hard days work and both nights were just what I needed.

I also saw the Star Trek film on Wednesday as well. It was a good film even if I don’t really know my phasers from my photons!

A quiet weekend lays ahead before 3 weeks of excavation proper.

Sorry for the 3 posts when one would ahve done but as the blog originaly posted itself 4 times it was easier to edit it into 4!

Keep on ticking by!

Field Work Diary Day 5

Rounding off the pre-excavation work was a field trip to a cemetery to do some graveyard survey work. This involves taking down all the details of a grave and marking it off on a map. And I mean all the details ranging from the obvious like the occupant and time of internment to the type and material of the grave as well as the typeface of the inscription. It was an interesting and varied day if not a little sobering at times due to the subject matter.

One grave that stood out to me particularly was a family tomb as the dates really told a story. One son dies in the Somme in World War One. His brother is then killed in India during active duty in World War Two. The father of the family dies about 6 days later at home, seemingly from grief. 8 years later the daughter of the family dies, presumably unmarried and childless before finally the mother of the family dies less than 5 years after that.

Other than that it was a good day and it was also nice to see photography used as a backup to our records, especially as my sketches were a bit poor! !

Keep on ticking by!

First I’ll put up my field work diary, then I’ll add the more personal stuff at the end.

Field Work Diary Day 4

Today was the second day of survey work for me, focusing on using and picking up on the changes in the magnetic field of the earth to try and find features in the ground. Magnetometry is brilliant as it can pick up things that are not there any more but were at one time such as trenches and post holes.

The whole day was really good fun and very informative. I found that I had the knack of walking at the speed of the beeps down perfectly which was nice. Apart from spending the day in shorts while being up to my waist in nettles and thistles (due to the rule that you have to have no metal on you when you do the survey) the day was a good one and taught me that although survey can be a little repetitive in nature it can also be enjoyable as well as useful.