Path Work - Balmoral Estate, the Mourne Mountains, and Glencoe

So here in Scotland May tends to be our summer.  It really seems like it's the month we get the most amount of sun and the least amount of rain.  Don't get me wrong, the summers in Scotland are definitely warmer, but they are also filed with lots and lots of rain......and midges. However May this year has been as strange as March and April with the mix of very hot days and some very cold wet, regularly snowing days.  Instead of spring we've had an interesting mixture of winter and summer.

We spent the first and second week of May back at Balmoral Estate back beside Fèith an Laoigh.  Similar to the lower section we were working on at the end of April, the actual surface of the path was pretty hard and the main focus was on removing the water off it.

That meant we needed to put in quite a few water bars and cross drains, as well as a few long drains to feed the water to them.  

We were also a few burrow pits to be dug to gain the surfacing needed to help finish off the water features and raise some of the sections out of the damper areas.  We dug a particularly big burrow pit on the last day to completely finish the work.  That was a tough day but completely worth it and a nice way to say goodbye to the site.

Whilst the scenery at that location on Balmoral Estate was definitely not my favourite we did still get to see some wildlife, most notably a newt when it was particularly wet. 

Then there was a completely different location for week 3, the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland.  I've been to Northern Ireland a few times but never really to this area so it was great to get an opportunity to see it.  The view of the mountains against the sea is really stunning though, typically, when we got to the top of Slieve Bearnagh the clouds had come down and we couldn't see a thing.

My role in this was to help with some survey work on a lower section of the path and that meant I actually had some time to do some exploring of the area.  Namely visiting the sand dunes at Murlough National Nature Reserve.  Was definitely worth a visit.

The last week before I went on holiday was with a different contractor and at a different location again.  This time it was on  the west coast, on a path in Glencoe called Coire man Lochan and it's a killer on the legs.  It's a good walk but pretty steep and, while you do get used to it after a while (and I'll definitely have time for that), I definitely don't see myself being able to speed up that hill as I was able to do with others.  It's had work done to it before, but the sheer angle of the path means that it gets eroded and destroyed pretty quickly.

Before

After

Steps and revetment added.

Added anchor bar at top

The maintenance work that I carried out was mainly adding anchor bars and revetments to hold the surfacing in its sections, instead of it just shooting off down the path, and adding features which will make the route of the path much more obvious to those using it.  At the moment there are a few braids, but hopefully the work we're doing will allow the vegetation to grow back in those places.

The views from this path are absolutely amazing and makes the slog up and work so much easier.  There's nothing like sitting with a cup of tea on your break staring at that. And this'll be my view for a few months now. Lucky me.

Path Work - April (Balmoral Estate)

So if March was a weird month weather wise, April was even stranger.  You do expect the weather to be all over the place, and even catch you out now and then, in the Cairngorms no matter what the forecast might say, but not as varied as this.  

We were supposed to be spending week 1 working on the burn crossing which used to have a bridge before the big storm a few years ago washed it away.  The plan was to place large stepping stones across the burn to allow people to get across, with dry feet, even if the water rose up a significant bit.  These would also be easier to replace than a bridge if they were washed away.  

I say 'supposed to' because we got one day to work on this (and what a beautiful day it was) before the snow came in.  And boy did it snow!  In one night the amount of snow that fell meant we weren't able to actually get to the site, even with a pick up, and had to call the week off.  

It did mean I got to go see Braemar Castle though, which I had been meaning to see for about a year now.

We had managed to get one side of the burn completed in that day so week 2 involved us finishing the crossing and working on joining the original path to this new route.  The weather in the second week couldn't have been more different from the first and it was so hot at one point I was actually working in my t-shirt.

Before

After

The stones in the river went in pretty easily for their size, but winching for that amount of time is definitely a full body work out.  CrossFit has nothing on that.  The finishing touch to this was to add landscaping to the island sandwiched between the two sets of stepping stones to help guide people from one area to the next.

Sheep's fleece

The joining route on the east side of the burn was through some very damp peat.  Which is not surprising really when you realise that this is the drop of point for all the water in this section entering the burn.  The worry here is that any cobble and surfacing put in this section will eventually end up being absorbed into the peat and disappear, leading to a very muddy path.  The solution we had to this was sheep's fleece. Once the tray was dug out we placed in a thick layer of fleece (which was walked into the tray), followed by a layer of larger cobble to help compress the fleece, and then layers of smaller cobble finishing with surfacing.

We also added a cross drain in the path to allow a pre-existing ditch to carry in functioning. 

And built steps down from this new path to the burn crossing.

Before

During

After

Then we started work on new path line on the west side.  We managed to complete the initial sets of steps which travel from the original path.  Even though the bedrock meant the steps had to go in a slightly different place then originally planned, we were still able to put in some manageable steps with stones revetments on either side (now completely hidden in landscaping)

Before

Roots found.......

......and then covered

After

We finished off this section in week 3 by adding steps on the burn side.  Whilst the path section had bedrock, this section had large roots which we wanted to protect as much as possible.  We used the last of the sheep's fleece to cover the roots and protect them, and then built the stone steps further out then originally planned to give a space between the stones and the roots.  Revetments were then put in place to hold everything together (again hidden by landscaping) and cobble and surfacing added.  

A tray was dug between the two sets of step which was then filled with cobble and surfacing to give a hard, even surface to walk on.  Thankfully this section was relatively dry and hard so a barrier wasn't needed this time.  The leggy heather in this section meant that landscaping was particularly difficult to find and I had to trek quite far to get what was needed, ironically through more leggy heather.

Where mud patch used to be

During waterbar construction

During waterbar construction

Finished waterbar.

Ditch re-dug

We then went on to finish the lower section of the path, adding cobble and surfacing to a muddy section that just needed to be raised rather than have a water drainage feature added.  As well as putting in a cross drain to a particularly muddy section which was still catching water despite being beside a culvert.  This may have been due to the near by ditch being overgrown so this was all dug out allowing the water to flow back down the the next cross drain, as originally intended.

Before

After

Week 4 saw us working on the higher sections of the path.  Before the path opens out onto the moorland it dips back into the Caledonian Forest and, whilst the path is in pretty good condition here, the heather is pushing people off the path onto the outer side.  So we cut back the heather, opening it up again, and dug out some of the waterbar that had also become overgrown.

Before

After

After

Finally we moved to the far end of the path, which joins onto a Land Drover track, and started working backwards along the path.  Most of this section is pretty hard under foot but there is still a lot of water getting trapped on it or running down it.  So that meant building a number of cross drains and digging ditches to draw the water from the upper side across to the lower side of the path, leaving it high and dry.

In the Caledonian Forest

Moorland

Probably the most interesting part of April for me was moving from the Caledonian Forest to the moorland.  As a biologist I am very aware of what the ecological differences are between the two, but the contrast is so much more obvious when you're working in them.  After spending so much time in the forest, the lack of noise in the moorland was particularly evident and not something I was expecting.

Path Work - March (Balmoral Estate)

March saw me working back in the Cairngorms National Park, this time on a path on the Balmoral Estate.  It has definitely been an interesting month weather wise, with some hot days and clear skies feeling almost like a Scottish summer to so much snow and wind we weren't even able to actually get to the work site.

Our location was a path that meanders through the Ballochbuie Forest on the north west side of the Estate.  This seems quite an underused path (I think we saw one person on the path that month) which is a real shame as it's a beautiful walk through one of the largest remaining Caledonian Forest.  You just don't get to walk through so many matured pines very often (the ages are supposed to range from 150 to 300 years) and it's easy to forget that this is actually what large sections of Scotland used to look like.  The size and feel of them is definitely worth visiting for, but luckily for me I get to work here.

The first work we did on this site was on the mid section of the path, just where the forest begins to thin out a little.  The path here has a pretty obvious line and is in relatively good condition but it needed some features to help move the water off the path and back onto the surrounding landscape.

Before

After

Reinstated crossdrain

This meant adding in a couple of cross drains, reinstating a cross drain which had gotten lost in vegetation and sediment, adding some anchor bars to hold the surfacing in place, adding additional surfacing, and digging a lot of ditching.

Anchor bar

Before

After

We had pretty much finished most the work here, apart from the landscaping, before the snow started.  However, it did mean that we had to wait until the snow melted before we could complete it as landscaping is one of the jobs where you do really need to see the area to get it right.

Before

Before

After

After

The second section was higher up the path and here the path was basically just behaving as a ditch.  To counteract this and keep the same path line we would have had to dig the same length of ditch as there was path and, as the path was now the lowest point in the land, this wouldn't guarantee that the path would remain even vaguely dry.  So, instead, we moved the path line to a higher section and made a few changes to the old path to make it a fully functioning path. 

For the new path line we cut back the vegetation, dug a tray, added coble where needed, and then used the material that came out of the ditch as surfacing.  It turned out to be pretty good material which hardened particularly well.  We then used the vegetation we had dug from the tray to re-landscape the ditch.  Not all of the plants will survive being emerged in so much water for such a length of time, but it will provide a good base for other species to settle and grow in the future.   We also left some sections deep and without any vegetation to act as small pools for wildlife.  This tuned out to be much more effective then we were expecting with frog spawn being laid in one pool just days after we had finished creating it.

We also added quite a few cross drains to this section to ensure that the same even amount of water was flowing to the landscape on the down hill side of the path similar to what it would be if there was no path at all.  This not only reduced the chances of the path getting flooded again but also reduces any changes to the ecosystem which might occur if water was removed from this section entirely.  This is obviously a side effect you want to prevent from happening as much as possible.

Before

During

After

A little further down there was a section where the path was still level with the ground but still had water running on it producing a large, muddy pool.  There wasn't a good place to redirect the water via a ditch so instead we built a double waterbar to take the water off the path and added a revetment down one side to lift the path up slightly and to produce a ditch down the side section of the path.

Uphill

Uphill

Downhill

We then headed back down the path towards the river crossing to where there was an overgrown ditch which took the water across the path at a low point.  This section had some bed rock directing the water but no other stone features and it had also turned into a large muddy section, causing people to walk off path to avoid it.  We added more stones, incorporating the bed rock stone (no easy task), to produce a cross drain and lifted the path by revetting down one side and adding cobble and surfacing from the ditch.  Once made deeper and wider to accommodate the amount of water flowing down it, the ditch was then landscaped using turfs taken when widening the path and widening the ditch itself.  Nothing is ever wasted in this job.

I was interested to see how I would feel about working in the cold and snow.  Especially in this slightly more exposed area and especially when snowy cold days are usually seen as being times you stay bundled up in doors or doing activities like skiing which are active but never far away from a warm cafe or bar.   But actually I enjoyed it.  Sure there was a day or two where we had to dig a little to get the what we wanted to work on.  Sure there were a couple of times we couldn't remember or actually see where we put the stone the day before which we were going to use today.  And sure break times did get a little bit cold at the end (I'm so grateful for rechargeable hand warmers and thermos flasks).  However that didn't stop me from feeling very relaxed and comfortable in the environment I was working in, more so then I felt when I was cooped up in an office, or enjoying the amazing views I was actually working in rather than viewing from afar.

We also got to see quite a bit of wildlife, mainly frogs and frog spawn, as everything started to gear up for spring time.  What more could you ask for.