On a refreshingly cooler and mostly cloudy day, Angus, Ginny, Ian S. and Jan met at Goose Hey Farm in Colden to walk down to a heavily overgrown stretch of steps on the Pennine Way above Hebble Hole.
Thankfully, local residents, Kerry and Tac, assisted us by generously allowing us to transfer our tools and materials to their Mitsubishi pick-up (now affectionately known as the Crowmobile) and driving down the steep field to our work site. Even more generously, they allowed us to keep the Crowmobile with us all day and use it later to take everything back to our vehicles (driving it ourselves and even hitching a ride on the tailgate back up the field!)
At this time of year, the Pennine Way steps are heavily overgrown and need some serious cutting back. In addition, several steps were damaged or missing and needed to be replaced.
We started by clearing our way through the jungle with the strimmer, the hedgecutter, the shears, the azad and the spade.
We slowly but steadily made progress.
Altogether, we cut back, cleared or repaired 55 steps during the day - a very good day's work.
We need to return to finish the remaining steps at the top of the flight and to fill the steps with aggregate where necessary.
Thank you to the landowners for permission to use their field and to park on their property, the local residents for the Crowmobile, the providers of the cakes and to Natural England for funding this work.
