BLACKSHAW HEAD - a full parish 'state of the paths' survey gets underway

Over the past couple of weeks, Mo and Ginny (with occasional help from Neil D) have been out surveying paths in Blackshaw Head parish to see what needs doing, and can be timetabled into CROWS' weekly work party programme.

This is an example of the sort of background work that CROWS undertakes, mostly out of the public eye - like negotiation with landowners to obtain permissions to access the paths, etc - that rarely otherwise gets seen or recorded.

Ginny & Mo fix a new waymark on an old stile.

Basing the work on a CAMS survey undertaken a couple of years ago, which had highlighted problems back then, we set out on an exploration of the state of the Rights of Way signage and structures in the parish. There is a wide range of popular paths, from those used by local dog walkers to those available to hikers on National Trails (e.g. The Pennine Way) to the rarely - if ever! - used local, overgrown gems!.

 A freshly-waymarked stile on the Calderdale Way.

Not surprisingly, there were a range of issues encountered - from simple missing waymarkers which were easily dealt with (till we ran out of discs!) to more serious jobs.  The latter, which included where a new gate or stile repairs are needed, will need further assessment and measuring up before work can be undertaken.  The stile above on the Calderdale Way is actually at the crossways of five paths, yet none of the other paths had been previously waymarked . . .  until now!

Mo carefully aligns the angle of the waymaker arrow before hammering the remaining four nails home.

Still the sun shone (some of the time!) and much good work was done, though a lot still remains. If you multiply that by the number of parishes in the Upper Calder Valley that CROWS' work covers, you get an almost overwhelming sense of the scale of the sheer number of jobs and the various of tasks facing our Volunteer teams...!!!