For some reason only the Ventures turned up to do a days work. Our brief was to remove the one last tree root from the surrounding land.

In the photo on the right the last tree stump an be seen. No amount of kicking or hacking with the hatchet would budge it. So we all spent hours hacking at the roots.

At this stage young Lisa Myles-Hook had just joined the RVU from the Gidea Park Guides. Following in a long line of Myles-Hooks in the RVU.

Jenny was there when we first let women in, Gail was there a few years later, now it was the turn of Lisa. Like Dave she was the third sibling of a family to join the RVU.

New recruit Lisa set about showing the old hands how to dig out roots. Dave was adamant that all the necessary effort could be effected upon the aforementioned tree roots despite sitting on his bum!

Before too long master Denton (Middle) agreed to join with Dave's way of thinking. In the picture to the left the three Ventures can be seen trying to sever the roots of the final tree, without breaking the rodding eye set in concrete.

This was one of the many days on site where we seemed to put in hours of work for little return.

Lisa was very nearly murdered by Dave and Ross when Dave asked, "Lisa, can you chuck us the axe?" she literally threw it at them!

This last tree stump was as stubborn as Dave so we used the tried and tested Scouting method of using rope and pulleys to pries it out of the ground.

Except the 3rd GP kit isn't the newest kit around.....

And the rope snapped, under the pressure that we applied to it. So we stared again. More digging, re fixing of the rope and pulley system, more sitting on back sides etc.

It was also brought to our attention that although the foundation had been completed, the drainage hadn't. A sophisticated labyrinth of drainage pipes had been devised by the chef architects and the trench that we were severing roots in was to become part of this network.

In the picture to the left Dave is sitting on a Rodding Eye or access point to the rain water drainage system from the existing hall. This would later be linked to the new network of trenches and pipes.

So after the rope snapping exploits it was back to hacking at the roots with axes and pick axes.

The trench that can be seen in the foreground was designed to hold the rain water gutters from the down pipes from both the new and old halls. The fire escape path has now been built over this trench.