PRACTICE MEET, ROUNDHILL FARM (LARKHILL ROAD), MARCH 2026

Practice Meet: 7th March 2026

Venue: Roundhill Farm, Dobcross

A “Bakers Dozen” of wallers met up for the second Practice Meet of the year. We returned to Larkhill Road to continue working on the wall up the right hand side. The weather was generally rather grey, with very light winds, but most importantly, it stayed completely dry all day and the ground underfoot was in good condition!

Around 10m of the old wall was taken down fairly rapidly, with anything that looked remotely “topper” shaped put to one side, as there were no actual toppers left in place on top of this section of the wall. Pete had also dug a few out from a heap of stone left over from previous work. This stretch of wall contained some fairly solid and chunky stone in comparison with the lowest sections, where the stone was rather small and fragile in places. However, we were rather lacking in those really useful thin pieces of stone. There were also a satisfactory number of “throughs” of a suitable length for the first lift – again, not a given.

After some solid foundations were put in, the wall went back up nice and steadily, and by early afternoon, we were ready to start topping. Some great team-work and creative use of some odd shaped stones meant we were able to finish the section of wall we had taken down by mid-afternoon. All in all, a very enjoyable and productive day.

Wildlife spots of the day were a lone Roe deer in the field opposite, plus occasional lapwings fluttering around. The many molehills in the field provided a useful source of soil to backfill the edges of the wall. According to Google AI (other search engines are available!), one mole typically creates around six new hills in a 24 hour period. Thus, multiple molehills may be the work of a single mole. Who knew!

Kathy England