Thank you for your comments, I'd never heard of black water dye(!)
Dave and Tess came over today to try and progress the project in what has been a lovely sunny day.
While we started with tea, obviously, Tess explored the bottom of the garden. She managed to get back up most of the steps without assistance...
I had started earlier by laying out some track and attaching it to that on the bridge in order to check the alignment and look of the whole thing.
Here is the whole set up viewed from the house.
After much fiddling with spirit levels and wedging and placing of steel flats Dave is here welding the first "baseboard edge" steel to the end of the bridge, which has already had a piece of steel flat welded in to form the "end" of the baseboard.
In the meantime, the boy Harry arrived to cut back an over-sprouting goat willow from beside the path.
Much checking of levels in all directions was done...
With the second steel in place, after lunch Dave formed up and welded the first pair of angled legs to the frame.
The first pair of legs in place. Although the legs are driven into the ground, there is a horizontal angle welded across their width at ground level which will support the structure against the ground surface. Dave came up with this neat idea as being all made up ground, a steel driven into the ground does not give any "purchase" until about three feet down, and then nothing too clever. Track dropped back into place to check alignment, it is lower in the frame on the left hand side which gives the impression of being off centre in the picture.
As the sun drops Dave welds spacers in between the steel flats, these will help give the concrete a good purchase between the steels when it is cast in place. At this point the camera battery failed, but before we went in for dinner we got the second pair of legs and spacers welded in, roughly where the silhouetted G-cramp is positioned in the below picture.
There are lots of challenges ahead, but this now feels properly started, setting up this first piece of the "steel jigsaw" was always going to be the most challenging part and I think we have accomplished it successfully.
All being well, we re-convene next Monday for further construction, in the meantime I am looking forward to going out there tomorrow and seeing what we have done so far in proper daylight.
Simon