Resuming our work at Stickle Ghyll

With our work all finished at Mickleden our attentions have now turned back to Stickle Ghyll. We started our work here back in the spring before heading over to Mickleden for the summer months, and we've only around two weeks of work left until this project is also complete.

It's really apparent that the seasons have changed since we were last working at Stickle, it is now feeling much more autumnal which is providing us with some classic Lake District views. It certainly makes the walk to work that little bit easier after prising yourself out of bed in the pitch black at the start of the day.

A misty morning in Langdale

The section of path that we've been working on has proved quite challenging as there is a lot of bedrock right where the path needs to be built, meaning the path has to fit around the bedrock, or alternatively it has to be chipped out with crowbars and sledgehammers.

Another thing that has made building the path a bit more complicated than usual is the amount of large boulders that are in the way. These large rocks have either been used for landscaping or, if they're suitably shaped, we've also been using them to pitch with.

Nic pitching with large boulders

Pitching with large stone like this really helps tie the path in with the landscape, but if they don't go in correctly the first time around it can really slow down progress. It can easily result in two, or sometimes even three of us levering the boulder with our bars to get it into the correct position, and it's not always a particularly quick process!