Day 5 at Usk

Three 'Usketeers' sped off down the M50 again today, regaled by Paul in the back with tales of his apprenticeship as a 16 year old carpenter, and an awe - full visit to a Catholic House for Wayward Girls. Boy, were those girls wayward. We were spellbound! Poor old teenager Paul didn't know which way to look, you wouldn't say that about him today.

But back to Usk, which we soon reached. Time flies, when you're being entertained.

Three 'Usketeers' here examine what is left of the building, which is now pretty far down to the ground. Just 2 or 3 courses remained this morning.

There is a vast pile of rubble in the middle. Where to start?

Thanks to our kind neighbour and his long extension lead, Dave was able to bring an SDS drill and have a go at the lower bits, which are held together by much harder mortar. This worked wonders for a while, then slowed down as well.

Hard work, this last bit.

Paul came today, looking cool.

New hard hat, cool shades, clean clothing.

An 'order giving' pose was adopted on top of the rubble. So that's how the clothes stay so clean...

We knocked this quoin off the corner, but it was too heavy for two people, and it was hard for 4 to fit around. Paul made up two loops, with which we managed to transport it to a pallet without having to bend over. Clever, eh?

Thanks to Mike, our local representative and keen GWSR supporter, and a friendly DIY shop in Cwmbran, we were donated a second van load of boxed pallets. We liked these; they are ideal for the inside stones which are only half dressed.
We knew from last week that this is a tipper van, so stood well clear as it tipped. Unfortunately the whole load jammed, so nothing much happened. A prod with a crowbar ensured that it came crashing down as intended.

Dave's SDS drill was brilliant but no sinecure - here it is stuck in a crack and it wouldn't come out. Pull the trigger and it just buries itself deeper. Now what?

Paul M decided that the answer was a hammer and chisel, while cool Paul T carried on supervising and keeping his outfit clean.

You can see the whole weighbridge hut from here....

We had some elevenses, which, surprise, consisted of more doughnuts, but the idea is to share them, not munch through a whole bag by yourself.

We carried on shovelling the mortar rubble out of the remains of the building, in order to expose the flagstone floor.

Jim too had a go and did very well, considering he has only one arm. Ever tried to use a shovel with a single hand?

While we were clearing the inside, we noticed that the doorway had a couple of flagstones outside it. Here is Clive digging off the dirt to reveal them. Remember that this building has had about a foot of spoil built up all round it, so much that at some time or other the doorstep had to be raised by two courses of blues.
Sadly the doorstep flagstones were shattered, so were not worth saving.

Lunch was al fresco again, under a hot sun, which was a surprise. It looked cold and chilly first thing, getting to be autumnal in these last days of August. It wasn't very easy sitting on the boxes filled with stone, so Jim is off the picture on the right. The burger van man did good business with us again, firstly with hamburgers and bacon rolls for lunch, and then Clive bought us all a round of ice creams.

We've taken off most of the dressed stone now, leaving big quantities of rubble and mortar inside. We can't take all that with us.

We reckon the whole building (just 5m x 4m) weighs about 50 tons!

Jim is having another crack at demolition, working Dave's SDS drill 'single handedly'. Another tour de force, how does he do it?

Outside the compound all our cars had their boots open, with plenty of kit to transport.

Ever played a game of 'Hungry hippos' with your children? It was just like that.

Your blogger's car is getting some abuse now, with dirty Usketeers being transported to and fro as well as all their demolition kit, which this morning included a 6ft crowbar. Where to put it? The ski hatch offered the solution.

Clive spent most of the day doggedly shoveling rubble out of the interior. He's doing quite well, don't you think? He has cleared all of this corner and is starting to go along the front wall. Small rubble is being dumped nearby; big stones are being put into the boxes. Today we filled another 6 of them. At say half a ton each, that makes 3 tons of stone shifted between us, and we're no spring chickens.

Slowly we started to tire. Clive is having a good think here. The ice creams raised the spirits for a short while, but three tons can't be denied, the body knows it.

More and more of us started to peel off and sit, panting. Three of us have back issues and we know our limits.

That said, we had sedentary jobs, and there is nothing like good healthy excercise to keep the body happy. We told ourselves....

At the end of the day the dressed stone was pretty much down to ground level, although we think that there are between 2 and 3 courses below that still.
Inside is still a huge pile of small stones and lumps of mortar, but we have made good progress on the right in exposing the flagstones.

As we unwound, Dave put the last of the big stones into the boxes, making an excellent 6 filled for the day.

Here they are, ready for collection.

A quick overview of the site at the end of the day here. Of course the boxes isn't all that we filled today, the quoins and dressed stones were stacked on the pallets to the rear of the picture.

There's also news on transport today.

Yesterday a large flatbed arrived to take away the first load.

We had shrink wrapped 12 pallets of dressed stone for the lorry, as that was the maximum load it could take.

In practice it only took 10 pallets, as two were beyond its reach. Loading was quite slow and laborious, as some pallets were in awkward positions for the lorry (which we had not seen before) and also the forks, suspended from a HIAB, took a lot of manoeuvering.

Here it is almost full. This took a full 2 hours. The loading was moved to the day before at the last minute, and we are very lucky that our local representative Mike was able to jump in and be there at the last minute.

The last pallet goes on. The final two at the rear were out of reach for the HIAB.

After a conflab we decided that the next load, in 14 days time, would be loaded by Telehandler. This machine can sort out the positions of the pallets and pick and chose the ones to load.

Mike sped off for half an hour and came back with an offer of a nearby Telehandler for a minimal sum. Such are Mike's contacts, well done that man.


While the pallets were loaded yesterday, the actual journey to Winchcombe took place today.

Mike accompanied the driver and took him to the yard at Winchcombe, where cheerful Stevie was waiting with the Telehandler to unload.

Unloading was much faster than loading up, so that Mike and the lorry were able to return to Usk by lunch time.

Shuttlings backwards and forwards over the two halves of the yard were interspersed with arrivals of trains with fare paying passengers. They come first, of course.

Here are the first 10 pallets from Usk, stacked at the back of the PWay yard. From here it's just 20 yards to where the building will arise again.

And for those that have forgotten what the weighbridge hut used to look like before we started, here is a picture of it 'as found'.

The vegetation is so abundant, you can't even see which side this is.





More Usketeering next week.