Well this will be a quick wee blog because a) lets be honest its Tuesday already and b) I wasn’t really out much last week – so most of it is hearsay.
This week heralded the start of the long awaited ‘swinging from trees’ project on the side of a high path on Blackford Hill. The objective was to replace existing sleepers and to try and prevent further erosion (of the hill) by blocking off vertical ‘runs’.
Most of the fun seemed to happen on Tuesday – although this again is guess work as there was a suprising lack of photos taken (!?!). The old sleepers were removed – as most seemed to be rotten in the middle, and simple platforms were ‘pushed’ into the side of the hill – so that people could stand on them to replace the sleepers. The rest of the group went down to the lower path/road to cut back enough vegetation so that we could take all the Type 1 (needed to backfill the path) in the back of the Kangoo…this being preferable to barrowing up last year’s steps….- more on this aspect later.
From what I can work out we were supposed to be getting the help of an enormous rock drill, -which didn’t turn up and wasn’t particularly missed- for the hammering in of 3m long iron bars to hold up some sleepers which would then hold up the path.
On Wednesday, the last of the sleepers were installed, iron rods being hammered in to secure. Then the shifting of the Type 1 began….first into the Kangoo…then up the hill…pushed out of the Kangoo …waiting to be barrowed up the shorter (but certainly no less steep) hill on Thursday.
Lunch was spent in the glorious sunshine next to the pond….ducking from birds…attempting to make tea/coffee with no spoons (or indeed teabags)…and the usual Wednesday banter.
Then, after all that heavy lifting and manual work…a nice light nature walk in the afternoon (leaving most of the VOs left to finish off). Many species found: Bluebell, Greater Stichwort, Primroses, Lesser Celandine, the weird Giant Butterbur. Dave started the first of many Himalayan Balsam culls – it might possibly be easier to do right now…but you need tweezers to get it out.
Thursday was spent barrowing the Type 1 up the hill – thanks and well done to all barrowers for this…it was a steep hill with a path with frankly no grip at all…plus the usual ‘problem’ wheelbarrows we had brought with us again. Lunch was spent by the ducks…who do in fact seem to like chocolate biscuits….possibly they are the reason we need to keep buying them so often?
During the afternoon, the main path was scraped…I don’t think I realised before quite how wide the path was…and getting lots of good comments/feedback from the public on this.
Thanks to Alan, Willie, Derek and Pat for doing a superb job on painting the duckpond gates.
To view photos of past and present projects and our volunteers in action please click here