Path Work - July (Glencoe)

So this blog is a little bit over due and I know I've missed two weeks, but I did recently buy a van and have been doing some temporary conversions to it to make it a suitable place for me to live in when I'm not at work.  I'll write more about that in the future and the possible plans I have for it moving on.  But for now that's the excuse I have for not keeping up with my one blog a week goal.

As with the last couple of months July has seen us working on the Coire nan Lochan path at Glencoe.  A beautiful location that means that, even though we see it on almost a daily basis, the views never get tiring.  It has been a pretty hot month though, and in this area of Scotland that doesn't necessarily entail clear sunny skies.  Instead we've had many humid, muggy days that have made the walk up a bit of a trial and brought out all the midges.  However, watching the mist rolling in and away again has been pretty spectacular and given us the chance to get some pretty close close views of the resident deer.  We've also had some amazingly clear and sunny days to compensate for it.

Just to finish of the last week in June that I wasn't able to add to the previous post.  I carried out some deroughening work on the upper section, removing stone that was making the path difficult to walk on, adding step rises to help maintain the height, and then cobbling and surfacing the section to produce an even surface.  This was followed by packing and landscaping work that had already been carried out, but needed finishing.

On a lower section a revetment was built on the slope side of the path to hold the bank in place and further step rises added to allow for easy movement in the section.  These also help reduce the number of stones from the scree rolling down onto the path which can cause a very uncomfortable walk.

Week 1 in July saw me carrying on with adding step rises and revetments to both the upper section leading up to the exposed bedrock and lower sections of the path.

And finishing off the revetment (mainly landscaping) started at the end of June.  More step rises were also needed as the section was a lot steeper than I had originally realised.

Week 2 was a particularly wet week.  However, this did allow us to survey the path in these conditions, helping to pinpoint areas where work was really needed.  This isn't always as obvious as you might think when it is dry or even in just light rain.

When we were actually able to get to the upper section I added some blockers to the side of some steps that had been added in previous work, but where there were areas of erosion.  I then started the process of winching over stones into a section of path where would be carrying out stone pitching and began the first curved turning point.  It's important that these curves are quite large when compared to the rest of the path to not only make the turn in direction as comfortable as possible but because this is usually the spots people choice to pass each other on.

When we weren't able to get to the upper sections we worked on a lower section where erosion had caused a section of the edge to fall away.  This had left an exposed area and was likely to carry on eroding until the path was gone completely and  new route would need to be found.  To protect it here we built up a stone revetment and, due to the steepness of the slope, this needed to start quite low down to ensure it didn't just follow the turf edge that had been there previously in rolling down the hill.  This was quite a satisfying build, but it would take a couple of days to complete this section entirely.

We were also able to see that a large amount of water hits the path at this point and so it became obvious that we would also need to add in a cross drains and dig a ditch into the bank to move the water off the path quickly reducing erosion and to allow it to carry on its natural course down the hill.  

We also needed to work on some existing stone work that had begun to collapse, causing people to pick a different route that was eroding the edge of the path.  Once the stone work was reinstated we blocked this braid with stones and landscaping.

Week 3 was almost as wet and did slow down the work a little.  However, I carried on working on the stone pitching I had begun the week before.  Adding a revetments to the side as well to hold everything into place.

And finally week 4.  The weather was definitely kinder to us during this week and it was definitely a week of packing the stone work we had already done and landscaping.  As well as adding surfacing to the path now that the stone work was in place to reduce the amount that would be lost through erosion.

The next stage was to work on the section just below the bedrock, putting in stone pitching to make it easier to get to and to make obvious the most accessible route.  We also needed to block a section that really wasn't suitable for people to use.  My role here was to do a lot of winching before adding some loose stones to act as a blocker and carry on with the final packing and landscaping.

And then we were onto the bedrock.  We were wanting to add steps to this section to safely carry walkers over the rock and avoiding some of the scree.  This was intriguingly like a very, very complicated jigsaw where you had to search for the almost perfect stone to fit into the mini gully which would also interlock with sections of the bedrock securing them into place.  We didn't get it finished in July and will continue on it in August.

The final work was on the large revetment we had been working on the week before.  This was mainly packing and landscaping but I also carried out some deroughening on an earlier section and added to step rises whilst my colleague was adding needed surfacing to the whole section.

And that was our wet and often quite midgie July.  Perhaps the most memorable moment was when a male deer came quite close to us (about 50m) in the mist and, when it lifted and he could see us fully, proceeded to just lie down by a rock chewing.  We stayed there for a few minutes staring at each other until the mist rolled back in again and he disappeared.