Hello all!
What with all the bank holidays and Royal Weddings of the past two weeks the office has been a quiet place and this blog has been neglected. Our apologies
Chris has been in the US for two weeks putting on his finest English accent, trying to make Americans believe he was ‘really missing the royal wedding’ and presumably seeing how many would buy him a sympathy drink. So it was down to us VO’s to organise the work, eek!
The last two weeks have been spent solely in and around the Hermitage of Braid and Blackford hill area, helping the local rangers prepare for their bid to add the Hermitage to the list of Green Flag winners in Scotland. The Green Flag is the prestigious benchmark for UK parks and green spaces and shows that a site has exceptional standards with regards to its conservation and sustainability plans as well as its interaction with, and benefits for, the local community.
With this in mind the first Tuesday and Wednesday were spent sprucing the place up a bit, we began by replacing 3 small sleeper bridges on the top path and repainting the railings along 3 more (significantly bigger) bridges that cross the burn.
The sleeper bridges that we replaced originally ran over “streams” which had for a long time been completely clogged up, however having done some exhaustive drainage work they are now free flowing and can actually be called streams again.
On Thursday we continued painting our bridges,The painting is a bigger job than perhaps we might have expected and with 2 and a half bridges done we’ve had to put it on hold whilst the rangers buy in more paint! Thursday was also the first time this year that we’ve picked himalayan balsam, an event that can only mean a LOT more is to follow over the coming months.
After one week without Chris we then lost Rachel as she went off to Poland for the REAL wedding of the year (her brothers) and Charlie who went to help run an action break in Knoydart. So 3 down 2 to go!
This Tuesday we had the task of clearing the burn of debris, waders and wellies ahoy!! As well as the removal of a set of wooden steps that were surplus to requirements. Two things that should be remembered about this second task. Firstly, these steps looked formidable.
Secondly, there is no man-made structure that a determined Tuesday group can not tear apart and demolish within 20 minutes. What I originally thought would be a couple of hours hard digging and pinchbarring lay in a neat pile at the bottom of the hill within 15 minutes. In fact I think tools may have slowed them down. The burn clearance went well and we had removed around 7 or 8 bags of rubbish by the end of the day, as well as 3 sofa cushions. Big thanks to Gough who came down representing the local Friends group.
On Wednesday we built a fourth sleeper bridge that had previously escaped the attention of both ourselves and the rangers as it had been pretty much covered by stone and mud as well as started to clear away the overgrown vegetation in the local walled garden. Lunchtime was spent basking in the sun in front of the hermitage playing frisbee with the top to the tea container and seeing who could annoy Neasa the most, this competition was a close one between myself and Alan and I’m now nervously awaiting retribution!
By Thursday we fancied a change from the Hermitage, and so went up to the royal observatory to both remove and install fencing around the car park. In certain areas the existing fence that had been designed to stop cars from running into the bushes had done its job a little to well having taken numerous shunts and bumps and so it was decided that it needed taking down. The fence posts, and i quote the rangers, ‘go quite deep and may take a while to remove’……. out in 15 minutes.
We recycled what we could to make our new fence line and did our best to get them painted, however rain made this a lot harder for most of the morning. After an early lunch, and with clearer skies, we carried on painting and erecting the fence whilst also painting some of the signs and gates in the area. The new fence line is set a little further back than the old one and is also cemented into place so should be a more formidable barrier.
Well that was our last two weeks and thats its for this blog. With no Royal Weddings coming up we should be back next week!