"The road to Dimmin Dale"
In the murk and mist, Ian, Jan and Jerry visited a broken stile by Fearnley Lea Farm on the edge of Midgley Moor, signposted to Dimmin Dale. The signpost itself was barely visible, so this was given a good clean and brush up and a brand new waymark post installed further along the path to make the directions of the convergent footpaths clear to see.
We underestimated the amount of repair needed for the stile. It was in such bad condition that one local we met resorted to climbing over the adjacent gate rather than risking it! The landing areas on each side were muddy slopes, the treads were rotten and the grab post had snapped at ground level meaning that the whole structure was unstable, partially held in one piece by the attached stock fence. The layout of the stile was strange too, with the steps appearing to be the wrong way around. However, rather than rebuild the whole thing from scratch, we decided to repair it as best as we could. We replaced the treads and the grab post and braced this with another post driven into the hillside which made the structure much more stable. We created a new landing step on the lower side which made it a lot easier to access the stile.
This path takes a lot of foot-fall and the stile is now much improved and usable. We do, however, need to return to create a safe landing area on the top side of the stile.
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| Bottom view... |
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| Top view... |
Thanks to Midgley Community Forum for funding this project.
