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.