Here we are back at CHW again for another 3 weeks of glorious digging! The hill just gets steeper, but it made ‘us oldies’ feel much better to see that both Don and Roger were out of breath as they reached the top!
Day 1 started with introductions and a welcome to the 6 students from Newcastle University, who are with us this year. It was good to see Michelle and Rebecca back with us again, and of course, Don.
The first task was to set up the shelter and ’loo tents – the storage and finds tents having been set up earlier in the week. When this was done, and both well pegged down, the next task was to start to lift the stones, soil and black polythene sheeting, put down at the end of last year’s dig to protect the site.
Suddenly it was coffee time and as it was blowing fairly hard by this time, we all retreated to the shelter tent. But not for long! A sudden extra strong gust of wind, the sides of the tent billowed and the roof took off! The small tear in the roof, which we thought could be fixed tomorrow, suddenly became 2 extremely large tears and there we were with a roofless shelter tent!
So then we had to dismantle it all (why did we put the pegs in so firmly?) and it was back to moving soil and stones. As lunch time approached, the first drops of rain started to fall, so we divided into 2 groups and squeezed into the storage and finds tents to eat our sandwiches. And the rain kept coming, and at 3pm Roger decided that we should call it a day. We look forward to seeing better weather and more new faces tomorrow.
Digging gets under way © Ruth Spencer
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