Eastern Team
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July 2010 by Ade Mills
July has seen our work mostly focussing on repairing the path that leads from Stickle Tarn to Harrison Coombe.
As we have worked our way up the fellside, the terrain has become increasingly rocky. This has proved extremely useful as it has provided us with plenty of landscaping stone, but it has also made the digging somewhat hard work! The project is now coming along nicely and hopefully we’ll be finished by the end of August or early September, when we will then move full-time onto the path at Mickleden.
Once again we were assisted by the Fix the Fells volunteer lengthsmen who joined us on a “work party” one Saturday at the beginning of the month. We resumed the work on the Mickleden Path that we had started with them on a previous occasion. The day consisted mostly of building small sections of pitching, drain building and re-aligning the path on to one distinct line, and was carried out on the lower section of the path, just past the bridge. Although the weather wasn’t the best, everyone still knuckled down and got on with the job in hand. Hopefully the summer will be back with us for the next work party in August!
Above: Moving boulders
Below: Fix the Fells at Mickleden (left) and levering the pitching into position (right)
For the second successive year we were again joined by a group of volunteers from Northumberland called “Traditional Boundaries - Traditional Skills”.
Traditional Boundaries - Traditional Skills is a project developed to help repair and conserve the traditional boundaries in Northumberland National Park and revive rural skills.
Above: Northumberland volunteer group hard at work - learn more about the project on the Northumberland National Park website
This year they helped us out with some of the repair work up on the Stickle/Harrison path to help them gain a bit of an insight into exactly what stone pitching entails. Although they were only with us for a couple of days they managed to complete a good section of pitching during their time.
Below: Starting pitching (left) and Nic looks on (right)
To find out more about the work carried out by Nic and his team, visit the Eastern team diary archive
