Tuesday
Today we were back on Berwick Law to carry on with our upland path. The group split into three- anchor bar, gorse and river teams. The river team had to take bits of fallen wall out of the burn, which was messy work but we battled on, though we were defeated by the lunch time call. Lynn led the gorse group up the Law to make the journey up the diverted path easier for walkers. Anna led the rest of the group in putting in the last remaining anchor bars, so well done to that group as they were beasts of stones!!!
After lunch the anchor teams battled on while the rest of the group began shaping the bottom end of the path and bringing down two damaged benches from the top of the Law, which was not the easiest of tasks.
Wednesday
We were back at Meadow’s Yard, with the intention of ‘puddling’ the rest of the clay previously dug up. ‘Unfortunately’ it was a beautiful sunny and (almost) warm day, and there had been no rain for a good few weeks/days so the ‘clay’ had crumbled and was completely unworkable!
So instead we continued to pull out rubbish and ‘trim’ back vegetation from the reserve. We had to leave the bath unfortunatly; but we did manage to take a wheelbarrow, several pipes etc etc.
Rob took us on a lichen survey- where we found some ‘bad’ lichens.
An interesting note: the hollow log that I took home – there is a theory that it was orginally an old water pipe!
Thursday
Returned to Berwick Law. This time, in addition to the heavy lifting work on the top path; there was the ‘lighter’ option of taking a wall out of the river.
The wall was near to one built previously by BTCVers (but not the actual wall) according to Pat. Either the wall or the burn had got too close to each other, resulting in the wall falling (or possibly being pushed?) into the burn, blocking its path in places. Kate, James and I set about shifting the sections of wall- mainly rocks and chunks of mortar out of the water. It was a sort of of ‘dooking’ as the water was too stirred up and muddy to tell where the rocks were – it was a matter of sloshing about and kicking things until you found a loose bit.
It was suprisingly enjoyable work, made easier by a pinchbar – although still lots of splashing commenced – and by lunch time both myself and James were sporting tribal mud on our faces.
The rest of the group continued in the search to find enough soil to put on the path and ascertain whether there would be enough rocks to complete the revetments. There is an ongoing debate as to whether we can use the nice rocks we hauled out of the burn….
So we’ll be back at Berwick next week – although the emphasis will be to ‘not work too hard’ as we are only on day 11 (of 20); and all anchor bars are already completed! Great work guys!