Restoration - Week 18

Again another lovely week of weather in Glasgow and took full advantage, working 2/3 hours every day this week to make serious inroads into the East Terracing/Queens Park End. Dividing this main section into 4 x 15 segments we managed to clear out lots of large tree roots and cleared lots of steps of the thick moss, flowers and weeks. Dirty and difficult work physically this week but very happy

with the eventual result. Averaging 2 x 1/3 terrace steps every day as well as cleaning more of the surrounding pitch wall in readiness for painting next month and as you can see from these latest pics we are making definite, if slow progress! As you can see, the pitch wall has been broken in several

places and we will first repair these parts before any paint is applied but as expected this is now beginning to cost and we are looking at the best ways of raising immediate funds to carry on with the work. But for now we can crack on with the stone cleaning with the equipment we already have, although we are going through wire brushes at an alarming rate!! Can't deny this week has been

tough, tough going and much blood, sweat and the occasional tear (caused by stone chips in the eye!) but the results speak for themselves I reckon. And with this spell of lovely weather it has been quite therapeutic just grafting down at the park and every day we are saving another few feet of history.

Four sections of the remaining 5 original terraces are looking so much better than when we began this work in late January and huge thanks to the Community Service boys for their continued help with the moss scraping and leave collecting from the Third Lanark Terrace/South Enclosure (pictured)

Also made some progress on the running track on this East End of the ground, removing the top layers of moss and gravel to reveal the original black ash surface underneath. This will reduce the track down 6 inches but will be much easier to flatten out and put back into proper use again.

As a runner myself I have injured my ankles several times over the tears on this pitted, uneven and badly maintained track and as the ground is being used more and more of late I am determined to fix this up section by section until it is properly operational again. Chatting to a few ex-Celtic players

this week they recalled training on this very track on endless running sessions as youth players and it is such a wasted resource at the moment. But as the photo above shows, this is another big old job and will be a slow process!

But very pleased with the work done this week and delighted with how well the old concrete terracing has come up with a bit of proper stone cleaning and this will look quite impressive by the end of the summer, before we can finally move on to the SE Corner terrace which is also in a very

sorry state at the moment and in danger of being lost to Nature in coming years, so still a mountain to climb before we can rest and be confident that all of our hard work has actually saved these old steps.