Eastern Team
The Mickleden project
August 2011 by Ade Mills
At the beginning of August we made the decision to have a break from our workon Stickle Ghyll and move our attentions onto the Mickleden project for a while.
The section we are working on is an area that had been previously repaired in the 1980s when the area was very badly eroded. As it was originally repaired before the use of helicopters for moving stone, all the rock would have been gathered by hand from the fellside. This meant, that thestone wasn't always ideal, meaningthe resultingpath was steep, straight and with many large steps, makingit uncomfortable to walk down. This led to people stepping off the path and walking alongside it, which has once again started to cause erosion. As it is a common complaint, especially with some of the older paths, that the steps are too high, we decided to address the issue.
(Picture: Levering a stone into position)
Although the path has greatly reduced the erosion damage, we thought thatsince we can now fly in bags of stone we could make the path more user-friendly. There are often constraints that mean stepsneed to be a little higher than would be desired, such as the gradient of the path and any underlying bedrock or boulders. So to remove some of the gradient we decided to re-align the path and put in some bends, meaning the steps don't have to be so high.
Where possible we are reusing sections of the original path and mixing it in with the new rock. We have saved all the turf that has been dug off and this will be used to landscape the old path, meaning it will blend in with it's surroundings much more quickly than if it was just seeded.
(Picture: Repairing the path, old path can be seen to the right)
Towards the end of the month we were joined by a group of volunteers on a National Trust Working Holiday helping us out with some path repair at Mickleden.
The group was split into pairs, and each pair given a section to work on, and with four staff at hand it meant we could give everybody plenty of help and guidance.
(Picture: National Trust volunteers hard at work)
As the week went on everyone started to get the hang of things and began to get more of an eye for how the stones should fit together. By the end of the final day we managed to get each of the sections joined and most of the landscaping completed too. Everybody had a really good time, although a few people had said it was much harder work than they'd imagined it would be.
(Picture: Volunteers on the finished path)
Easter team diary archive
For a more detailed insight into our work: Visit: http://fellrangers.blogspot.com/ or follow us on Twitter @NTCentralFells