Height Road and Hill House Brink
The weather turned out well today despite the showery forecast as Ian S, Frank S and Paul D returned to the footpath that slopes down from Height Road to Raw Lane through Hill House Brink. We had four tasks to complete today including; repairing a gap stile, putting in a low marker post, tackling some drainage and installing another length of revetment along a dicey section of the path.
This is an interesting route with great views and we met several walkers who thanked us for our work. Undeterred by a few light showers, we pitched into the tasks and had completed 3 out of the four jobs by lunch . . . which was conveniently taken on a memorial seat neatly placed in a gap between yellow gorse bushes.
This work was funded by general donations to CROWS. Many thanks.
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| Arrow indicating location of gap stile and footpath. |
Gap Stile
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| Gap Stile on road-side. |
The two treadboards had become loose and were 'bouncy' underfoot (on the road side) and two of the cross-rails had rotted at the ends causing instability of the whole structure. The treadboards were packed underneath then fixed securely to the stonework while the rotten cross-rails were replaced with some shiny new ones.
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Frank taking out one of the rotten cross-rails.
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| Repaired stile |
Marker Post
The path that leads downhill from the gap-stile divides in two after 50 m and it is only the lower of the two options that is the ROW. As this can be misleading for walkers, we installed a new, low marker post at the path junction to indicate the path direction.
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| New marker post |
Drainage problem on the sloping path
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| Muddy area on the path |
This photo, taken in the current spell of dry weather, doesn't show how treacherous this area can be for the walker in wet weather. The water coming down the banking (on the right of the photo) can be torrential and, instead of washing straight across the path to cascade downhill, it tends to stream down the path causing significant surface damage.
Our plan was to install a turn-bye across the path to channel water down the banking away from the path itself. However, when Ian started to dig he hit what he thought was bedrock! Fortuitously, this turned out to be a large flat(ish) boulder which, by use of brute force and some cunning leverage, we managed to extract!
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| "Its a bit big!" |
So, we now have an over-sized stone blocking the ROW! What do we do with it? More leaverage and a lot of grunting tweaked the stone across our newly dug channel to create an impressive stepping-stone 'bridge'.
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| Securing the stone. |
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| Finally in place! |
The last job - another piece of revetment installed along a dodgy banking!
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| Dodgy banking |
After lunch, we worked on positioning and fixing a new length of revetment along a severely eroded section of the path:
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| Getting the new length in place |
While manoeuvring the plank we discovered a friendly Fox Moth caterpillar . . . and here he/she is . . . !
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| Friendly chap . . . minding his own business. |
Frank S used his charm to redirect the critter to a munchy green leaf . . .
. . . Moving on we fixed the timber in place with four stobs . . .
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| Fixing the length of timber. |
. . . and then with some path widening we finished the job.
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| Job done! |
There is more upgrading work to be done on this footpath. We will be back . . . sometime soon!
