So my maintenance contract has come to an end for this year. It's a sad moment as I've enjoyed most of it, but the season is now over and we're not sure what next year will bring in this area (mainly due to funding and things like Brexit). Due to the end of season I only have two weeks to write about.
We finally finished the work on the Quoich Water path on Mar Lodge Estate that, I have to admit, was beginning to drag on a little even for my enthusiasm for being outside. So that is a whole lot of area trimmed, dug to form a tray and then filled with cobble and surfacing, along with some landscaping on the old path and some stone work to help cross a stream. It took a while but it quite stable now and, river erosion permitting, should last a few years.
Then I went on a weeks holiday whilst my colleagues carried on working on path maintenance.
The last week was mainly spent on the Balmoral Estate and boy was the weather different from the heat and sun we had been used to over this summer. A lot of wind, a lot of fog, and a lot of rain. Damp right through to your bones rain.
On the first day I headed up the Loch Brandy path and up The Snub to clear out the water bars and cross drains, and do some landscaping on some of the braids that had begone to more on the sides of the path.
There were some issues with water erosion on the path, but hopefully, now that the drains are clear, that should be reduced for the coming year at least.
Next was Glas Allt. I didn't get too many pictures on this one as the weather was so bad I was worried by phone would get wrecked by it. First stop was clearing the silt traps at the top of the path. These do a very good job at collecting any surfacing that washes off the path into the drains, stopping it from disappearing down the side of the hill. Such a good job in fact that it took us quite a bit longer then expected to empty them all, but at least the paths look well surfaced again.
After that we spent time at the bottom of the path to deal with some really obvious and bad erosion caused by footfall and the amount of water that comes down this section. It meant adding some step rises, doubling up the water bars, and landscaping some of the worst eroded sides of the path to hold the ground in place. No easy feat seeing as there weren't too many stones easily available in this area. But hopefully this will help fold the path in place from now on and help protect the path further down as well. Despite the rain this was actually one of the most satisfying sections we have done because of the erosion issue.
The last day was spent in what is my favourite Glen of them all, Glen Doll. We were working on this side of Jock's Road, from the shelter beside The Lunkard down. As before this was mainly about clearing out the drainage systems, but some step rises were need in certain areas as well and these were added.
This really was the best place to end our maintenance season as, even in bad weather, this Glen is absolutely stunning and what I instantly think of when I'm thinking about the Cairngorms. We even got to listen to the stags roaring as rutting season has begun.
No comments:
Post a Comment