Central and Eastern Team
October update
by Nic Fish
October was a busy month for the Central and Eastern lakes footpath team. Our monthly work party started the month of. Again the volunteers helped us to move the Mickledon project on at a good pace.
The rest of the month was spent carrying on from where the work party left off. October sees the end of the footpath season for the footpath teams around the Lake District. The days become to short and there aren’t enough day light hours to be up a fell at 1500ft working at 4:30pm.
This meant that the team had to try and complete the work on Mickledon. There where a lot of small section to finish off, one of these was to replace an old stepping stone that had been washed away at one of the river crossings. The stone was quit large and it took three of us to move it.
Work also continued on landscaping the area where the Acorn camp had been working earlier in the year. Landscaping is an integral part of footpath work without it the path would look unfinished and people may not stick to the newly laid path.
Unfortunately we didn’t quite manage to finish the path, however it shall easily be completed early next year.
The end of the month saw a slight change to our usual work. The team spent 2 days on top of Rhinos pass helping the Western Valleys property take down an old electric fence that had been put up by the local farmers, at the out break of the last foot and mouth. It was used to help new sheep disappearing into the wrong valley. Herdwick sheep have an excellent heafing instinct (sheep will always return to the part of the fell on which they where weaned as lambs); unfortunately this was lost when all sheep in that valley had to be slaughtered. The fence had long since become unnecessary and wasn’t being used. It wasn’t the best weather but over 6 miles of fence was removed over two days.
Eastern team diary archive
For a more detailed insight into our work: Visit: http://fellrangers.blogspot.com/ or follow us on Twitter 
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