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.