TUESDAY
The sun showed his face through the clouds on only the odd occasion on tuesday at Cammo Estate, but this didn’t dampen the volunteers spirits in the slightest as we quickly constructed a 15 metre bark chip path for ranger Jessica and the public of Edinburgh. Derek and Steven got started digging out the one end of the path and myself and Peter (the big fellas) worked on the other end. Neil positioned himself somewhere in the middle and we tried our best not to bruise him accidentally as we swung our spades through the air. Our smooth route to glory was disrupted by a series of irritating shrub roots, but the BTCV A-team doesn’t like being disrupted in any way and we soon took care of those pesky invaders, leaving only the enormous grey hardened-off roots of the various ornamental firs sticking up above the ground and they now form a little decorative feature in our path. We ran out of terrain at about 4.00 and spent a little time digging out the next few metres of path before heading off home, emerging from the cool and quiet seclusion of Cammo directly into the roaring traffic and blistering sunlight of the queensferry road.
WEDNESDAY
Chris took the volunteers down to the Water of Leith to paint.
THURSDAY
Thursday was a tough sweaty slog! We were repairing the path at Midmar above Blackford pond, using some old sleepers and extra long pins to secure them. Whin dust was to be layered over the newly laid hardcore which helped buttress the sleepers in place. Derek brought out the A-team spirit along with his black A-team t-shirt, and provided a first-class gravel shovelling service at the bottom of the hill with some of our other valiant volunteers providing the barrow service. Martin Pat Peter and Dave Reed bashed on with the job of tearing up the eroding path and setting the new sleepers in place, and Pat did his best to throw himself down the steep slope towards the allotments. Lunchtime was spent mostly dozing in the hot sun and all the dog-walkers and tourist groups got a real eyeful of a perspiring group of grafters in the afternoon as we finished off the job and applied the whin dust to cover the rough hardcored surface that we’d left exposed. The A-Team finished the job with about an hour to spare and with nothing else to do we took a slow drive back through the leafy suburbs and headed back to base for a well-earned biscuit and ice-cold drink.