Salem Bridge - Ten day bridge building workshop

Date: 
Monday, June 19, 2017 to Friday, June 30, 2017
Location: 
Salem Ontario (near Brighton )
Status: 
Completed
  • A dry stone bridge was constructed by students taking the ten day bridge building seminar held near Brighton, Ontario the last two weeks of June 2017. 
    A permanent stone bridge was built to replace the old wooden footbridge on a lovely rural property an hour and a bit east of toronto . It spans about 12 feet across a fast flowing year round creek.

    The course was held during two consecutive 5 day work weeks. It will be taught by me and one other instructor. Participants got ten days of full hands-on experience learning to build a typical Scottish packhorse bridge. 
    There were some heavy weather issues causing one lost day and a scheduling of working on saturday the weekend of June 22nd and June 23rd to repair the north abutment from flood damage.

  • Camping was available on site. The course fee was 130 dollars a day and had been deliberately set low to encourage stone enthusiasts with or without experience, not just professionals. 
    In addition to students having the standard instructional printed material provided for this DSWAC course, registrants in the Salem Creek Bridge Workshop got a copy of my recently published book How To Build Dry Stacked Walls and Bridges. There were field trips to visit one other bridge in the area . Well done students!
Hands up everyone who had fun at the bridge workshop !



Great meals together

Cool refreshing stream to stand in while you work
Getting into shape while shaping stones
Lots of exercise

Beam balancing and challenging obstacle coursing


Barrel vaulting 


Powerful drilling

Lots of photo taking

Dollying massive voussoirs

Hoisting huge rocks

Getting rained on nearly every day

Learning to work as a team


Pitching 


Coping well



Cleaning up


And cooling off !


and Voila !