The weather has made a dramatic change in the last ten days, from the very wet winter which made progress on the castle so difficult to what seems like summer, with spring missed out. In the cliffs to the east of the castle, the sea pinks are in full bloom. The red behind them....
....is the jacket of one of the five men who are now working on the east curtain wall of the castle, doing the first stage of the pointing there having completed the process on the north wall.
It's painstaking work as the mortar has to be pushed deep into the crack between each stone. Picture shows, from right to left, Richard, Paul, Bradley, Matthew and Adam.
They're all Yorkshire lads with typical Yorkshire senses of humour, which must make what might otherwise be a tedious job more fun. Bradley complained I hadn't taken a photo of him, so here it is.
But the process of repairing the walls has now moved beyond pointing. Damien Summerscales is a stonemason - also from Yorkshire - who has begun repair work on the more severely damaged parts of the walls, where the wall effectively has to be rebuilt. He's just completed a repair here, measuring about 1.5m x 0.5m, using stones that have been cleaned ready for the job. One wonders what caused the damage - a cannon ball from one of Mingary's sieges?
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