Due to the outbreak of Coronavirus, and the team being furloughed from March through to mid-June, it's been a long time since our last post.
Prior to our furlough we'd been involved in a wide range of lowland work such as drystone wall repairs, stock fencing, deer fencing, and improving the drainage at Stickle Ghyll car park.
Our drystone wall work was mostly around the High Close estate and included repairing field boundaries and a large stone revetment that had been damaged by a fallen tree on the trackway that runs adjacent to the Red Bank road.
Damaged revetment
Newly repaired revetment
Stock fencing work was also carried out around High Close. An old fence that had been put in around 30 years ago to keep sheep out of a small area of woodland was definitely showing it's age. The fence was removed, any re-usable posts were kept, and it was replaced with new posts and wire. This will keep both the tenant farmer happy and also improve diversity in the woodland... a win-win.
We also erected a deer fence in a woodland above Troutbeck Park. A small enclosure was made which, being deer-free, will allow the ground flora to flourish and the trees to naturally regenerate thereby improving the age structure of the woodland.
Old fence on High Close estate
Replacement fence
Deer fence in Troutbeck
Our work at Stickle Ghyll allowed us to turn our hands to a bit of brick-laying as we added additional drains to the car park and replaced many of the original drains with a new "chambered" design while also replacing the drain covers. The car park regularly struggles to cope with winter flooding so fingers crossed the improvements will help rectify things.
Excavating in the car park before rebuilding the drains
Completed drain
But just as we were just about to complete our estate work for the year and resume our upland footpath work, the announcement came that the team would be furloughed.
On our return, after a day of catching up and reading all the new guidelines on how we can now safely operate, it was straight back into bag filling on Loughrigg ready for the upcoming helicopter lifts.
First bag filled on Loughrigg
