Wed 5th Aug 2015 - Shade Makers, Castleworks, Wroxall. GG # 596.

Carrie's Photographs.

 

Before we started.

Road Repair Team.

Tidy up along the road.

Discovering a window.

Above and below….. admiring our efforts…!

Mark's Photographs.

Work starts….

The Road Repair Team at work.

Our hosts for the session.

Part of the platform stone wall uncovered.

An old bird's nest.

Some of the rubbish we collected…!

Phew…. didn't we do well…!

The majority of our recent GG sessions seem to held over in the Ventnor areas and this week was no exception. This Wednesday we were to work at a new site for us - the old railway yard, which was once formed part of the Wroxall railway station. The public car park, where most of us parked, was in fact where the station itself once stood…! Those interested in the history of this station may wish to look at the following link - www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/wroxall/ - there are some nice historical photographs towards the end.
Enough of the history and on with the task in hand! Inspection of the site showed a VERY overgrown area, that had once been part of a platform, plus a recently delivered pile of crushed limestone about 4 cubic metres in size. Mark explained that we were to cut back as much of the undergrowth as possible and the limestone was to repair the rather rutted approach track to the site. Team wheelbarrow and shovel set to work on the road repairs and managed to complete that in just a little over half an hour..! As we hacked into the brambles and weeds a natural stone wall slowly appeared which, as we cut back further, revealed the surfaced platform area. Hopefully the photographs will show this much better than I can describe it.
As a matter of interest, the building that formed the backdrop to the platform we were working on was originally a slaughter house / bacon factory. It was extensively damaged a couple of years ago, during the St Jude's Day storm - see photograph below.

Tea break this week was amazing! The ladies at Shade Makers had made loads of yummy cakes for us and served us with copious amounts of tea and coffee. We were then given a quick talk about the work they do (building carnival floats and costumes) with a guided tour of the workshops and stores area. I think everyone in our group was very impressed with the complexity and size of the float..! Thank you to our hosts for making us feel so welcome. For further details of Shade Makers, please use this link
https://www.facebook.com/ShademakersUK
The session continued with working on the platform area while others were tasked to give the general area a quick makeover - including hedge trimming and litter pick along the adjacent footpath. Although excellent progress was made, we fell short of exposing the whole of the platform in the time we had - perhaps a return visit could be arranged Mark? We did have a couple of light rain showers during the morning and, perhaps due to it being a new venue, an exceptional turnout of GGmers (approx 40 plus?).

Many thanks to Carrie and Mark for the photographs.