Well, a new week and a brand new project for us!
This week we went off to Donkey Field Orchard (no, there were no donkeys in it sadly) to start a path building project. This area is run by a group called PEDAL, Portobello Transition Town group, who are a group aiming to “work to create a vibrant sustainable Portobello which can help combat climate change by reducing fossil fuel use through re-localising.” So, how does this site help that? Well, when it is complete it will be an orchard and will be providing organic, locally grown food for the area.
We fit into this by working with them to make the site accessible. They want it to be open to everyone, therefore our job is to make a path down the steep slope that is wheelchair accessible. We were greatly helped in this by a member of PEDAL who is a surveyor, and who marked out a site for the path to get it at the correct gradient. So, first thing we had to do was turn the guiding line into a staked out path, which was not as easy as it sounds.
We are only using straight lines, and so the corners proved to be rather tricky, but together we managed to work it out and get everything marked. We also had a visitor on site with us. Charlie came down from Stirling to cut down a large sycamore tree with a chainsaw. This has left plenty of logs that lots of us are just aching to take home and turn into things.
After this came lots and lots of digging. In just over a day though we have managed to fly ahead and we have dug out more than 30 meters of path already, which is a great start to the project. I’m sure we are all looking forward to going back next week. There is lots more information about PEDAL and their aims on their website (PEDAL Website).
To view photos of past and present project and our volunteers in action please click here