What a beautiful day on which to be out working in the countryside! There were two teams out from Todmorden today:
1 RJ and David were strimming the Pennine Bridleway (PBW) section at Sand Bed, adjacent to the Halifax Road, (on BW Blackshaw 094). They then moved on to strim the PBW near the Top Brink in Lumbutts.
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| PBW at Sand Bed. |
2 Catherine and Kasher replaced a marker post on Erringden 022 which indicates the Todmorden Centenary Way (TCW) through Burnt Acres Wood. They then moved on to a stile on the same footpath to replace two step legs and a treadboard.
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| Location of the repaired stile on Erringden 022. |
Today's work has been funded by Lancashire County Council (for the work on the PBW) and by Todmorden Harriers (from the Flower Scar Fell Race) for the work on Erringden 022. Many thanks to all.
Details:
Team 1 CROWS have again been 'contracted' to strim sections of the Pennine Bridleway in the Upper Calder Valley. Today was the first major strimming session of the season. David had his initial strimming lesson from RJ and was introduced to the delights of strimming!
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| RJ at Sand Bed. |
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| The PBW above Top Brink. |
We had asked Steve Blacksmith to assess this section of the PWB for any flora and fauna of which we should be aware before we tackled the work. We took care not to strim the Jack-in-the-Hedge, which is in full flower and is an important plant for Orange Tip butterflies.
Team 2 The marker post on Erringden 022 was relatively easy to install especially as the landowner kindly said that we did not have to dig out the remnants of the previous post.
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| The delights of a rotten marker post. |
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| Colour co-ordination today. |
However, removing the rotten legs from the stile was a completely different exercise! After a large amount of sweat and a few expletives we managed to remove both of the legs. Thankfully this area had a large amount of stone nearby which we could use for refilling the somewhat larger than usual holes.
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| The rotten stile leg to be replaced. |
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| Catherine doing battle with the stile leg.... we were certainly impressed with the initial installation of this stile! |
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| The replaced short legs and treadboard. |
We were pleased to be working in the shade on this sunny day. We were accompanied by the sounds of a nearby stream and were lucky enough to be surrounded by a host of bluebells. We took the opportunity to do a some Balsam pulling along the footpath as we took it in turns to wrestle with the step legs!
