Eastern Team
April 2010 by Ade Mills
April was a busy month for the Eastern valleys footpath team. It started with the first path maintenance day for this year’s intake of Fix the Fells volunteers. Once again we were bathed in sunshine all day, which always helps the day run smoothly. All the volunteers seemed well motivated and enjoyed the half-day drain run up Loughrigg.
Hopefully they will all complete their training and we shall see them out completing drain runs on a more regular basis, helping to continue the vital work of our current volunteers.
We have also been continuing our work on Garbon, which is now almost complete. Again we have been helped massively by volunteers.
April has also seen the yearly bag filling and helicopter lift.
With much of our time being taken up at Garbon we only had a limited amount of time to fill the bags for our two main projects for the year.
This year's projects will be spread over two locations. Firstly we will be working on the path that runs from Stickle Tarn to Harrison Combe.
This path has been worked on before but as it is such a popular route much of the old pitching is beginning to erode, which means people are starting to walk off the pitching, forming an erosion scar. The hopeful outcome will be to re-lay the old pitching with new more substantial pitching and then to redefine the path higher up where the route works its way through a bolder field.
The second half of the year will be spent on the Mikledon to Rosset Ghyll path. Again this path has been worked on before, however side paths are beginning to appear and some of the drains are beginning to leak.
The idea is to add some extra pitching to help support the old pitching, to replace old drains and landscape out short cuts. This is all vital work to help keep people to one line, eliminating any further erosion.
If this work wasn’t carried out, soil and gravel from these paths would get washed out and eventually find their way into tarns and rivers, which would after time start to silt up and often prevent water flow, which can in turn cause flooding.
All being well and with a bit of good weather to help the projects along, these should be completed by the end of October this year. Fingers crossed for a dry summer.
To find out more about the work carried out by Ade and his team, return to the Eastern team diary archive