I will be working with Dyfed Archaeological Trust on their Bank Holiday ‘Lime Heritage Discovery Day’ on Monday 27th May; here’s a little information about the day if you fancy coming along!
See bottom of page for event programme.
You may recall my previous posts about the CALCH project (see here) – the fieldwork during which it snowed, blew a gale and threatened to leave us all with hypothermia – and we’re back up at the fantastic site over the next few days. Here’s a rare photograph of sunshine during the CALCH project…
We tried our hardest to ignore the weather – we climbed up the mountain (granted our cars did the actual ‘climbing’) and put on our waterproof and windproof layers, but alas! We could not overlook the weather conditions for long; the gale force gusts were attempting to knock us over once again and the snow was hitting us in the face at such a pace it physically hurt. So shortly after we arrived at the mountain, we left the mountain.
The weather forecast suggested that there would be as much snow today as there was yesterday, so we decided that we would not risk the mountain for fear of getting stranded up there…
It looked like a lovely morning this morning – some of us arrived on the mountain early and had a cup of tea whilst waiting for the rest of the team to arrive. As we laced ourselves into our sturdy boots snow started to fall. We thought nothing of it; we are a resilient bunch (as it seems our volunteers are too) and we walked up the mountain to continue the previous day’s good work.
The sun was shining and we were all happy as we gathered in the car park near Herbert’s Quarry. We donned our extra pairs of socks and commented on the presence of snow and the lack of an almost gale force freezing wind – compared with the windy conditions last week presented us today was balmy. Almost tropical in fact!
Unfortunately, due to the bad weather (torrential rain and suchlike) we could not work on site today and the weekend sessions will also be cancelled.
The start of Thursday 14th March marked the beginning of the 4th day of fieldwork on the Black Mountain. Menna and Sarah from DAT were joined by three volunteers – Tony, Joe and Brian – all of whom were wrapped up and raring to get on with more archaeological investigations on site.
Whilst Sarah and I were sitting in the warm in Llandovery, Menna and two hardy volunteers (Gaynor and Brian) had ventured up the Black Mountain to continue with the plane table survey. There was less wind and more sunshine so setting up the survey equipment and taking measurements was a great deal easier!
As it often does in Wales, it’s raining. Properly raining – not just a little bit of drizzle here and there but a full on precipitous flood. That’s the situation in the valley – we haven’t ventured onto the Black Mountain today as it is almost guaranteed that the rain will be combined with a deadly cold, almost gale force, wind.
A day in the office, however, does give me a chance to update the CALCH fieldwork diary with information about the work done on the mountain on Wednesday and Thursday (I had Thursday off), so keep an eye out and enjoy reading about our mountain top lime project!
