A dry day at last.

Rhino had a rugby match this morning, a hard fought and honourable 5 - 5 draw against Harpenden.
Light wind, compared to yesterday, no rain, even reasonable light 1/10th cloud with nice sunlight.
When I came home decided to set out for the allotment site to fence, as my plots are both still too greasy to permit any useful work.

Just took the tools in the trolley to start with as I was unsure how greasy the ground might be. Decided the best thing to do would be the next braced, or straining, post. This turned out to be the worst post of the whole fence, could not do it inside the old fence as Cath & Colin have a raised mound in front of the old fence, so had to work outside the old fence, which was tricky as I had no flat ground to start with. What I had to work with was a six to seven foot deep ditch, with a foot wide ledge just outside the fence, which until I got to work with the spade was a slope down into the side of the ditch. Not as bad as it sounds because there were some field maple and blackthorn up to 2" diameter to give me some footholds.

Once I'd made a platform to work on progress was rapid, barring the ditch negotiation each time I needed to fetch stuff or get back to work. I had the upright's hole done within half an hour, went and got the upright on my shoulder and it slotted in just right. The brace holes preparation was done within another half hour, then back home with the empty trolley to get the braces and three bags of ready-mix concrete. As per usual the brace holes needed more taking out to fit and as per usual the old posts reinforcing concrete intruded, meaning I should really have been a foot further to the left, but it was managable.

Once all that lot was bolted together and concreted in I still has enough daylight left to finish off the fifteen foot length. Planted two dog-roses in the gap between the new fence and the deliberately left length of old fence, then sewed both fences together at each end of the old length. All the gale force wind of recent weeks had taken the bramble and pushed it over, so what I'd trimmed to vertical was leaning away into the ditch at fortyfive degrees.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable afternoons exercise with some concrete results.
Now there is the small matter of the eleven upright posts needed to fill in between the two bits of work described above.