Three teams out today.
Team 1.
RJ, Fred, Stuart and Gerald after adding 3 steps and 3 posts, then widened the Jail Hole path up to Gaddings.
Work funded by Calderdale Small Grants
Team 2.
Paul and Frank H worked on a ruined stile and awkward ditch crossing near Carrs in the Old Town/Chiserley area. This was the situation before work began:
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| Ruined, single-step stile accessed by an awkward step up and across a ditch. |
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| Ruined, narrow stile with lower ground on the field side than on the ditch side. |
A level 'walkway', keyed into the wall on one side and pinned into the ground on the other, was constructed; a task considerably more difficult than it appeared at first!
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| Completed 'walkway' giving a safe route across the ditch towards the stile. |
The old single-step was rotten and needed replacing, but because of the discrepancy in levels between the ditch and field sides a two-step stile was judged to be the better option. The stile side-posts and cross-rail, however, were sound enough to be re-cycled. Some time later . . .
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An overall picture of the 'walkway' leading to the new steps which
are neatly 'squeezed' into the narrow gap of the original stile. |
Once a stile has been built, it needs testing. Since Frank H was behind the camera, Paul was volunteered to be the guinea-pig!
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View from the field side. Safe, secure and aesthetically pleasing . . .
. . . and that's just Paul:- the stile was even better.! |
There is still a barbed-wire protector to be added on the right of the stile. The tubular one (re-cycled electrical trunking) that we tried to fit, broke!
What is difficult to spot from the pictures is that, to the left of the stile, thoughtless walkers had been by-passing the old stile by lifting up the barbed wire, forcing down the stock fencing and scrambling through the gap:- not a practice to endear themselves to any landowner! Hopefully the correct right-of-way is now obvious!
Work funded by CROWS
Team 3.
Mo, Stella and Ray worked on some of the access paths which run from Slack Top and Widdop Road down to the lip of Hardcastle Crags, improving the waymarking, cutting back, scraping off, and tackling a drainage problem. More to do next week. Work funded by National Trust.
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| New waymark post installed... |
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| ..painted... |
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| ...and properly dressed... |
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| ...so you can see the route. |
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| Cutting back from this... |
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| ..to this. |
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| Clearing muddy stone path from this... |
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| ...to this. |
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This stile was missed on the survey so we'll repair it next week.
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