Midi Pyrenees Work Camp September 2005

Maison Quaker Congénies was a comfortable venue and the weather was good to us; rain only called off play at 7.00 pm Sunday evening. This time we had electricity, lights, a working kitchen and hot water, what luxury! The new notice board looked great and it advertised our Sunday meeting for worship

However the work was much more physically demanding and we had the normal set backs. There was a lot of labouring and digging of trenches. Dennis‘s surveying tools came into their own and we all learnt a lot about plumbing. Ali, Francis and Dennis had put hours in preparing the ground for the new shed and Ewen surfaced it with concrete, then he broke concrete to allow for new pipe work under the garden paths: Linda and Paul took down and re-roofed the garden shed and it looks great, then set to starting to build the walls to the garden shed. Phillip and Christian laboured digging trenches: Dennis was buying and organising: after a day trenching Karina and Cynthia changed tack to the more gentle painting: they were joined by Francoise and Mary Savage: Derek her husband treated many planks of wood with his one available arm. Kim painted and trenched in between arranging and cooking all our meals.

At the end of the weekend all the exteriors of the windows and shutters had their top coats, all the little bits of painting were finished off except the interior of the front door, shame, but we achieved as much as we could and Francis and Dennis were able to complete the external pipe work after we left.

We have learnt that 4 days is probably better that three and it is essential to have a comfortable place to go after working hard all day, so we looked forward to spending the evening at the ever hospitable Tomlin’s house. At some time there may be more comfortable chairs and even a lounge at MQC in the future. We also look forward to the summer kitchen.  A great thanks to everyone who contributed.