Clanranald Trust for Scotland - www.clanranald.org

Just an Update on the fort, Palisade!

The first of the logs went in by hand in 2008. This was a major milestone towards what initially looked like a time that would never come. The wood we required was not available on site and the costs were high. The first breakthrough was deciding to use what we had on site or do nothing. The wood was not what we had wished for we wanted Larch for the job. The initial run of logs were put in by hand with the help of the Greenworks mates from Drumchapel, Glasgow and it wasn’t long before we realised the digging alone was going to wear us down fast. The Clanranald volunteers were physically fit men and women too.

The greatest break was the arrival of North Lanarkshire Justice Reform service. They had met with us earlier onsite to discuss possible involvement and we offered a programme and the necessary steps were taken. The JRS arrived with a small Digger and this allowed progress that we had been aching for. Pun intended.

The Swiss Volunteers from the Im Speck Highland Games came and performed wonders. We met through the band Saor Patrol being hired to perform at their Highland Games in Switzerland. We had diggers and forklifts on site and the Gatehouses that they had previously built by hand earlier in the year were superseded by a mass of palisade being erected.

The Journey to completion has been a long one and many people have unselfishly given their time and effort to see what sometimes seemed not a lot in the scale of it. This outer Palisade is a massive undertaking on its own and to understand it you can only do this by taking part. These logs are massive the ditches are deep the tonnage of rocks and material that are required to backfill the trench is immense. This is all done by hand manually too.