Path Work - September (Glencoe)

It will come as no surprise to anyone that September turned out to be yet another wet and windy month.  There were a few days where we got to experience some lovely, dry and sunny moments, but really we're just getting used to working ever so slightly damp and perhaps cold now.  However, this month was a little shorter for me as I took the last week off to go exploring on the west coast.

One definite positive for this month was that we finally got to start the process of working our way back down the Coire nan Lochan path.  It may just be 1 minute off your walking commute each way to work, but, believe me, that makes a whole load of difference.  The heavy rain we've been having had given us a chance to have another look at the sections of path we've already been working on and see if there was any additional work needed that might not have been obvious before.

Water bar

View through water bar

Ditching

Along with making sure we had completely packed all our previous work, what we could see from the rain lead to us adding a stone let just below the big section of bedrock, increasing the height of the hill side revetment beside the stone pitching work I had done earlier, and adding a few more double water bars.

Actually we added quite a few more double water bars, but this should hopefully reduce the amount of maintenance work needed on this path in the future.  

Once this section was completed we started work on the site just below it.  Here the path is particularly steep and this meant that a lot of the surfacing, coupled with the scree that was descending onto the path, was rolling down the path itself.  This wasn't helped by the water that also comes down this section.  Stones were difficult to find here so we had to work out the best options with the tools that we had.  We secured one step riser that had been placed during previous work but was now no longer functioning properly because of erosion on either side of it.  For this additional stones were added on either side to secure it in place and increase the width of the step reducing further movement of surfacing from above.  However, the main work here was adding in some stone pitching with a hill side revetment.  This not only held the path surfacing and scree in place more securely, but is also intended to help lift the walker up the path in a much more comfortable, less steep, and less slippery way.  Another step riser could probably be added here but we just couldn't find the stone to work with.  Unfortunately not uncommon with maintenance work.

Before

After

Before

After

The next section was actually where a small burn crosses the path.  Quite a bit of water comes down here and some work had been carried out previously to channel this across the path quickly.  However, the cobble coming down the burn had blocked part of this and it also looked like a stone had shifted on the raised section, both of which meant water was now travelling down the path instead of off it.  We decided to turn this into more of a water bar style feature, adding stones to raise the raised section further and to protect the bank above this that was beginning to get eroded.  Then liners were then added in a stepped fashion to help channel the water down the slope to the main burn.  These had to be placed directly onto bedrock and the stepped feature meant that the stone below to help hold those above in place even when the water flow is high and strong.  Some stones were also removed from this section which were no longer functioning as previously intended and were now just blocking the flow of water.  Larger stones were also added to the hill side of this section just to hold back some of the coddle that usually comes down with the water.

For our Friday work we went back to the section where we had been adding a number of step rises so that we could put the finishing touches.  These mainly included surfacing and landscaping, but we also added revetments to the downhill side of the path to hold it in place and to allow us to deepen the trench and reduce the angle of the path.  We filled the path with cobble that had come down the scree section and was blocking the path, and then dug quite a good burrow pit to get some lovely surfacing.  All landscaped to make the stone work appear like it had always been there and like the burrow pit had never been dug.

Before

After

After

Before

After

Then we moved further up the path to a section where people had to walk around the outside of a large stone, but where the path was also now beginning to erode away and completely disappear down the hill.  We had thought about adding a revetment to the downhill side of the path to hold it in place, but actually it seemed a lot more logical to just move the path to the upper side of the rock.  Whilst my colleague added some stone pitching below this I removed the bank of the upper side, working down until I reached a smooth and level line for the path to be at.  Any spoil and stones not used on the path itself were then used as blockers on the line the path used to take.  Landscaping was then added both to the blocked section (more is actually needed here and will be finished in October) and to the undercut bank to help strengthen this in the long run, stopping it from collapsing onto the new path line.

I also got the opportunity to do a little bit of work with the contractors I'm currently with at Steall Gorge.  Here a pretty large rock had fallen onto the path, blocking it, and we needed to move it off.  Rolling it off the path completely wasn't really a possibility, so we dug out a section of the bank beside the path and moved it there to act as quite a large blocker / revetment.  More, smaller stones were then added to finish the revetment completely and a step added to make moving through this section a lot more easy.  Surfacing was added to the path to make everything a lot smoother and the usual landscaping added to help stabilise the soil around the stones and make the appearance of work having been done less obvious.

Further down this path was a section where the path was eroding away on the lower side, collapsing into the burn, not helped by the fact that the burn can rise quite high and undercut this section.  For this section we needed to build a revetment which was more like a drystone wall.  I didn't do any of the building in this case, but instead my role was to provide the material needed to do the work, including coddle, soil, and gravel to act as fillers for the wall.  I also cut away at the bank of the hill side of the path to help move the path a little further away from the edge, helping to move walkers off the outer edge helping to reduce the amount of erosion there.

So it may have been a short but wet month for me, but it was still a pretty productive one and we did get some beautiful days (as the picture above shows).  And, as usual, the wildlife didn't disappoint with birds singing even in the worst weather, deer almost always on show, and getting to see these amazing cobwebs in the early, cold, damp mornings. 

The even changing scenery which this ever changing weather brought was also pretty spectacular!