Simon came round this morning...

... and between the three of us we had the scaffolding up in no time. As we found last year when Dave came for a couple of days an extra pair of hands can make a considerable difference.

Just one row of scaffolding (3 metres height) was sufficient to reach the roof on this side of the barn and we had a really good go at getting all of the tiles off. They didn't need much, it has to be said, and we had that job finished well before lunch.

We found the usual suspects sheltering in the roof under the tiles - a mouse nest, some ant nests and a wasp hive, but Terry struck gold yet again. This time he disturbed a sleeping bat. There's all kinds of livestock living in these roof spaces - there's a beautiful birds' nest wedged into the woodwork of the place. Someone has taken ages to build that.

There were also several trees growing in the barn roof and a couple of those were impressive.

Once the tiles were off we took off all of the laths. We were of course planning to change the chevrons too but they look in really good condition for the most part. One or two are perished, one has dry rot and one or two ends have gone but the rest are very good. One or two look like they are just out of the sawmill.

A few ends have been cut and replaced too and so we reckon that this side of the roof has been repaired once in the past.

Tomorrow we'll be fitting the laths and starting on  fitting the sheets.

This evening I was speaking at a meeting on eco-construction. There were only 10 or so people there but as usual it's quality not quantity. One or two people were very interested in my project and they may well be coming to visit me next week. I shall have to get moving.