As arranged Luc Vandecasteele brought the pre-cut steel bars for the Cenotaph Railing Frames to the Le Fevres Event at Eu in Normandy, France so that we could bring them back to Terry Clark’s Forge in the UK, where a forge-in has been planned to prepare the frames ready for the event in 2016. An initial estimate on the weight of the bars was around 500 kilos this was later raised to 600-700. On Sunday and because of the weight it was decided to split the load between two vehicles – a group of instructors and students from the blacksmithing course at Plumpton College, East Sussex were at the event and as they had spare capacity in their vehicle they offered to take part of the load back to the UK via the Channel Tunnel. We packed the rest in my vehicle (well distributed of course) and brought it back to the UK via the Dieppe to Newhaven Ferry.
Back at home in Sussex on Monday we transferred the bars from my vehicle to the trailer then drove to Plumpton to collect the remaining bars from there we then drove to Terry’s Forge at Guildford.
We would like to offer our thanks to the Plumpton team for their help (Instructors Ricky Delaney and Tony Holmes) as it would not have been possible for me to bring all the metal back in my vehicle as I was also carrying an anvil with wooden stand, a hearth, fan and hand tools.
Loading the steel at Plumpton College (Ricky and Tony flanking a student drafted in to help)
Unloading at Terry’s Forge near Guildford (Terry and Robert).
