Winter adventures in the Peak

A number of recent jobs required the use of a jack hammer.  The team store up these jobs: as they do not own a jack hammer, it is cheaper for them to hire one and do all the jobs in one go.  A job that I helped with was the replacement of a gate at the riverside site.  A jack hammer has a few bits and pieces that have to be fitted together - the generator, and some pipes that connect it to the hammer to supply it with the pneumatic power that is needed.  I had 15 minutes entertainment whilst the lads worked out how to put the thing together.  The pipes have male and female ends, which led to the inevitable ribaldry that now seems to be a feature of working with the gang!  Unfortunately, one of the wardens nipped his finger fairly badly in the assembly process and had to be bound up with sticking plaster.  The Birdman used the jack hammer to drill and loosen the asphalt and concrete around the old post, and then drill a new hole for the new post. The lads asked me if I wanted to try drilling. Always one for a challenge, I said yes, but immediately regretted doing so. The tool itself was so heavy that I could barely lift it, let alone control the direction of the drilling.  I have huge admiration for anyone whose job it is to use these tools - road gangs and the like.  It is back-breaking work. To do it on a regular basis must lead to all kinds of ongoing injuries.

We had a week or two of heavy rain at the end of January.  As I explained in a previous post, our Riverside site is bounded on one side by the river, and on the other by a railway.  It is a flat piece of land which on the railway side slopes steeply up a bank to the railway.  At the bottom of one end of this piece of land are a number of houses at the edge of the site.  A path leads round them from the road to the site, at the beginning of which we were installing the new gate.  The recent rains have caused this path to be completely underwater. The rainwater forms a large pond on the upside of the path, which has overflowed. Apparently there are some drains from the railway which have failed and caused the problem.  For reasons that I didn't fully understand, it seems to be a difficulty to get the railway company to agree to access in order for the work to be done.  Our team has a responsibility to maintain the paths, so the flood constitutes a problem that has to be solved.  Whilst my two colleagues were busy with the drilling, I started to dig a channel from the pond, across the path to the lower land on the other side.  I could see that the main problem is that the 20 metre path has a dip in middle section which causes water to drain there instead of away.  I amused myself with this activity for some time, and when I had finished digging used a broom to sweep away a lot of the water.  To some extent this was a fruitless task, because as fast as I swept, the water poured in from the swollen pond.  However, I did make some impression and was pleased that I had alleviated the problem to the extent that at least there were dry patches that pedestrians could use.

Snow is now lying and the temperatures have been sub-zero for most of the last week. The lake is frozen.  This makes work with the Countryside Service a little difficult.  It should be cold too, but generally we are working so we don't get cold. This week I worked two half days, which suited my other activities.  In the morning, my constant companion, The Birdman, announced that there was a small piece of dry stone wall that has collapsed and was in need of rebuilding.

The cause of the damage is a sycamore that seeded next to the wall and in now 30feet tall. The roots have grown under the wall and recent strong winds have caused the tree to sway, with the roots destabilising the wall.  I thought my colleague was being a trifle optimistic, thinking that we would rebuild a 6 foot stretch of wall in a morning!!  But it turned out that he has never tackled a job like this before.  Neither had I, but have watched others do the job and had the theory explained on more than one occasion.  The first task was to take down the damaged section of wall. This is more difficult than it sounds, due to the way in which the stonework interlocks - you take one bit down, and the next bit falls down!  If you're not careful, the whole wall is down in no time. But we soon cleared the stone, (in spite of having to hit the stones with a lump hammer to break the ice holding them together!)  and set about the task of rebuilding.

Talk about the blind leading the blind!  After a little while, I realised that The Birdman was looking to me for direction.  Those who know me recognise that I sound as if I know what I am doing, even when I don't!  But I knew that we had to clear a shallow trench first and then lay a foundation.  So this is how we proceeded - me making a suggestion about what to put where, waiting for agreement, and then going forward.  A strange reversal of roles.  As a great fan of jigsaws in days gone by, it seemed natural to me to look for a stone of the right shape and size to fit the space.  Surprising to me was that The Birdman didn't seem to find this at all easy.  After a morning, in which there was some discussion about the relative stability of a semicircle or box design, we had finished about two feet of wall to half the required height!  I was left wondering when this particular project might be completed.  But I was pleased that The Birdman seemed impressed with my suggestions, and didn't quite believe that I had not done anything like this before.

Bird Surveys

It is mid December. We  had unseasonably mild and dry weather in November, but it has now gone cold with a smattering of snow. This time last year we were knee deep in snow!  My family in Australia report similar strange weather. My conclusions based on this limited evidence is that climate is indeed changing. I am pleased that this now seems to be accepted by the scientific community if not the community at large.

In the spring, surveys are carried out of woodland birds in the two main woodland sites. These surveys are carried out to provide data to the British Ornithological Society. In 2010, su;rveys were carried out along the riverside site every week during the breeding season. This year a similar number took place along the trail. I went out with The Birdman a couple of times. It turns out that even though the data had been collected, no-one had time to collate it all.  So I volunteered for the job. Using the data sheets, which are maps of the area onto which are plotted sightings (or birds heard), I counted them all and entered them onto a spreadsheet.  It is an interesting list, although I don't think anything particularly unusual was sighted.   The commonest birds along the trail are, bluetits, followed closely by blackbirds and robins.  The least common were mistle thrush, red poll, and surprisingly woodpigeon.   Mr Head Ranger says the data will be used in a management report.

I've been a bit busy with other things of late, so have only managed to go out maybe two times in November, and once since. However, on one of the occasions I learnt how to lay a hedge.  We went to the wildflower field,  and removed a fence separating it from the trail.  There is an old hawthorn hedge along this boundary, interspersed with ash saplings.  Old hawthorn, I learnt, is hard and brittle. As a consequence we spent a frustrating time trying to lay the hawthorn, only for it to split and snap at the point where you bend the branch to lay it.  Sadly, we dispatched three or four old hawthorns in this manner. We were more successful with the ash, which is quite bendy.  

On another occasion we were replacing some fencing alongside an old quarry. This site is now an amenity area, with pools where the quarrying took place, surrounded by cliffs.  Apparently it is a popular site for picnics in the summer, and local youth risk their young lives by jumping off the cliffs into the water.  They also camp out and build campfires out of any bits of wood they can find.  This is why the fence, which was a wire and paling affair, needed replacing.  Bits of the paling have been removed over time to make fires.  So we took off what was left and replaced it with fencing netting and barbed wire strands along the top.  We left the fencing we removed in a tidy pile to provide fuel for future fires as it was no longer in sufficiently good condition to keep. It was cold on this day. I found it hard to keep my fingers warm enough to function, whilst at the same time retaining the dexterity required to manipulate fencing staples.  It was a question of gloves on, gloves off all day.

This week we had our annual Christmas dinner at a local hostelry. Nice meal, but for some of them it provides and opportunity to drink a lot, so I left after the food and hugs all round.

On the merits of volunteering

There have been less musings of late, I suppose that has been because I am now familiar with a lot of the work that we undertake. We have been pretty busy with footpath work these last few weeks, which means digging steps, mending gates and erecting stiles.  I have commented from time to time in previous posts on my difficulty in using some of the tools. I am now pleased to report that I can use the shove-hole tool more effectively. I am still fairly slow, but this doesn't matter so much when my colleagues are engaged in other activities nearby. I think the hardest part of any of these fencing jobs is digging the holes, since the ground in the Peak District is very stony. My colleague the Birdman says that in Norfolk, where he comes from, digging a hole is easy peasy.

I recently visited an old friend in Scotland who has been involved in community environmental issues for 35 years. He is an interesting character who keeps a fairly low profile but likes to get things done behind the scenes. Over these years he has been instrumental in obtaining funding from a variety of sources in order to improve community facilities where he lives.  These projects have included, protecting and reinforcing the laws pertaining to common land, buying land for the community, planting woodlands, and perhaps more importantly, helping to set up a Trust whose role it is to oversee the various projects.

I was telling this friend about my work with the Countryside Service. He asked me what I thought about the suggestion that, as a volunteer I was doing someone out of a job. So this week I talked with my colleagues about this.  They were adamant that, firstly there ARE no paid jobs that I am replacing. There is no money for any further posts, and so far none have been deleted. Their view was, that without volunteers, many of the jobs just wouldn't get done.  But they were clear that there were other advantages to using volunteer labour, in that we have different skills and knowledge that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. Two of the other volunteers have an engineering background,  so can explain the way that the stresses on a gate hinge operate, and why it has to be hung in a particular way, for example. Another is nifty with DIY skills. Me, well I make up for the lack of skill with energy and enthusiasm! Another reason why volunteers are welcome is that part of the mission of the Countryside Service is to educate the public about wildlife and environmental issues. They feel that we will go away and explain what we have learnt to other people, which is true.

From a personal point of view, I can say that the whole experience has given me an opportunity to learn new things, both knowledge and skills. I have encountered different viewpoints. I have also been able to make friends in the community which I was not able to do when working full time.  I feel a tremendous sense of pride when I can walk round the countryside and see the things that I helped to make happen.  Altogether it has been very enriching, in a way that other activities I might have taken up in my retirement would not be. In conclusion, I think volunteering in this context works very well for both parties.

Rural vandalism

These last few mornings there has been a nip in the air, and a definite smell of autumn. The hills are purple with heather, the fields of grass turned brown. It seems awfully early, but then perhaps it always does after a wet summer.

Last week there were riots and looting in cities across England. Try as I might, I cannot get my head into the mindset of the people who do the damage, it seems so counter-productive.  Perhaps I have been lucky to have never been in their situation. Having said that, I do remember a time a long time ago when I had no money and stole some turnips out of a farmer's field, and lived on that and milk for a week.  In those days you didn't draw more money from the bank than you had, for fear of being hauled up before the bank manager.

Against this backdrop, we received a call last week from the Lady of the Bridleway.  She was trying to put in a large waymarking sign, but the post was too heavy for her to manage single-handledly.  So Birdman and I set off to the place where we had been mending fencing damaged by four-wheel drive vehicles a couple of weeks previously. The post, which measured about 20cm by 20cm in girth and held a sign announcing a voluntary one-way system, had been erected to guide traffic down a particularly rough piece of track.  The post had been forcibly lifted out of the ground so that vehicles could drive over the place where it had been erected.  It had been cemented in in the first place. In order to pull it out, the person(s) responsible must have used a winch or a crane of some kind, so it wasn't just a random act of vandalism, it was planned and must have taken place at a time when very few people were likely to be about.  On this particular stretch of bridleway there are about five gates. Every single one had been damaged by being driven into.  I expressed my disbelief, but apparently some of the 4x4 community think that a right of way gives them the right to a clear passage. Never mind the farmers who are trying to keep their stock in a field.

It took three of us to dig a hole and to re-erect the post.  The posts are extremely heavy.  I am quite strong, but I could barely lift one end of it off the ground. To my utter amazement, the Birdman lifted it singlehandedly into the hole. No gym needed for him!! We saw some swallows wheeling about, and a merlin hunting some smaller birds.

Meanwhile I spent another morning with my colleagues weeding bracken out of the stewardship field. This is being encouraged by careful management to produce native wildflowers. I also received a lesson in sharpening the sickle and some shears, a useful skill indeed. We went out later and used them to clear the footpath edges of bramble and overgrowth.

Mud, glorious mud.

Last week we were doing some remedial work along a footpath, my report on that has been delayed. I've mentioned elsewhere that groups of people other than the County Council get involved in managing the countryside. There is a charitable organization which creates projects that benefit both people and the wider environment. Here in the Peak District, one of the things they do is to take people who have been convicted of anti-social offences out to do community service. One such group was tasked with building a boardwalk over a piece of boggy ground on a footpath.  Unfortunately, nobody looked at the spec., with the result that the completed work partially obstructed a gateway into a field.  Naturally the farmer was rather displeased! Our job was to take down the offending section, to build steps from the level of the remaining boardwalk to the ground (about 1.5 metres), and to replace the removed section with a paved path.

I wrote previously about a fencing job which had been the hardest physical day of work I had done in a long time. Well, this was worse!  The job was difficult partly because the constructing team had made a very robust job of it.  They used screws that were never meant to be unscrewed. Having removed the screws in the end by sheer brute force, and bolts holding it all together, the section to be taken away weighed a ton and required all four of us. Then, the posts to which all of it was attached were firmly stuck in the bog.  It was hard trying to get the posts out. If you tried to dig down, the hole quickly filled up again with mud. If you wiggled the post to loosen it, it was still very hard to shift because of the forces of suction.  Eventually it was a matter of using a crowbar to stir the mud in order to get enough air in to release the suction.  We put a bolt through the top of the post and levered the whole thing up. By the end of the de-construction,  I (and the tools) were covered in mud, . Not a good look!

When the unwanted structure was removed, I then set to work helping in laying some stones for the paved area across the bog.  We were using stones that were lying about (Derbyshire is full of stones!), many of which had to be crowbarred out of the ground.

All of this was hugely difficult and energy draining. Not for the first time did I thank my training regime. If it were not for that, I probably would have conked out half way through the morning. As it was, I lasted towards the end of the day, but by then I was so tired I could barely carry the tools back to the pickup.

Until now I have not been critical of the work that we do. But I thought today's job was utterly futile.  I couldn't help but think of the hard work put in by the team who constructed it in the first place.  A simple human error in this instance by the person in charge of that team led to probably a couple of days' worth of lost hours, which surely is not good in these times of straightened circumstances.

This week it is raining constantly, I have been told not to bother going in.

Strength is required

There had to come a time on this blog when I mentioned my other great interest, which is doing Crossfit.  For those of you who have never heard of it, it is a set of gym techniques designed to get you "stronger, fitter, faster", so that you are better able to go about your everyday tasks.  Crossfit consists of small group classes where you can train in weight lifting techniques and a variety of cardio exercises.  It is pretty tough. People who have been to commercial gyms get wiped out in the first session.  After eight years of it, I reckon that, compared to many of my age group peers, I am reasonably fit.  I can certainly lift much heavier weights than I thought possible. But more of this later.

We were up in the hills again this week, repairing a section of fencing along the Pennine Bridleway.  This is the section of the bridleway that we came to a couple of months ago to clear the drain culverts. (A sunny spring day in the hills, 25/3/11).  It is a really beautiful spot, quite high up, with views all around. You can certainly see the rain heading towards us!  A highlight of the day was to see several hares running about.

This part of the bridleway is used by a variety of off-road vehicles. The track itself is in a sorry state, the whole having been churned up to such an extent that any surfacing that existed has long ago disappeared, and it is down to bedrock.  I imagine that if off-roading is your sport, then it presents an interesting challenge. In the section where we were working, the track had deteriorated into a series of foot high steps, at which apparently, at least one vehicle had got stuck and needed to be rescued.  The solution was to create a two-lane track, and to suggest a one-way system where the new bit goes up, and the difficult bit goes down. Unfortunately, a person driving a landrover had tried to go down the up bit,  too fast, lost control and ploughed through the fence which separates the bridleway from the adjacent farmland. 

I have had a rant elsewhere about irresponsible people who do not respect the countryside. Our leader for the day mentioned how this particular bit of fencing had only been repaired about a year ago. Apart from the difficulty of catching people who do the damage, apparently it is difficult to prosecute as rules here are not legally enforceable as they are in the Lake District.

There was a stretch of about fifty metres to repair, so again, Our Lady of the Bridleway needed to enlist the help of the countryside team.  There were five of us engaged on the task, three staff and two volunteers. First we checked all the fence posts to see which needed to be replaced. There were several which had been sheared off at the base. The next task was to remove the staples holding the fencing wire and the top strand of barbed wire from the posts.  The ease with which this could be done varied, but using a fencing tool with a hook at one end, and a hammer I soon got the hang of it.  I removed eighteen staples from one post alone. Next, the new posts were put in.  We had another tool for this, called a post-shove!  (People who are regular readers will know that I have a fascination for the variety of specialised tools that we are able to use). The post-shove is similar in shape to an oxygen cylinder, about two thirds of its length, open at one end with a flat end at the other. It has two handles, one on either side.  It fits neatly over the top of a post. Two people grab hold of the handles and, using the tool in unison, ram the post into the ground. This was quite fun, but as the tool itself is quite heavy, you can only manage about six blows at a time. Each time the post-shove hits the post, it emits a deafening clang.  So much for the quiet of the countryside! With all the posts finally in place, we re-attached the fencing and the barbed wire.  This in itself is quite hard work, as the wire has to be stretched taut. The previously-mentioned fencing tool is like a pair of pliers and is called a strainer. You use it to grab the wire and pull it tight until your partner secures it to the post with a staple. 

I have mentioned before my ineptitude with tools. This time I was getting frustrated at my seeming inability to hammer a staple in straight. My partner was trying to instruct me in the use of a hammer, with some small success. "You're too timid. Just wallop it!" he said. But I walloped it and it went in sideways. Ho hum. I shall have to practise more. 

To return to the title of this post and my opening paragraph, strength is most certainly required. Has Crossfit helped me? Well, yes and no. Last week when we were making cement, I was unable to lift the bag of cement out of the van. Neither was I able to shift a bucket of chippings. But this week I could carry fence posts from the van to their intended location, and was able to carry a roll of fencing wire. This was also very heavy. So I conclude that whilst I am stronger than many of my friends, I need more strength, and better skills to do this job. But I suppose that is why you have a team of people to help each other.

Voluntary bangs and bruises

In the first few weeks of my voluntary work for the Countryside Service, I received many instructions about health and safety matters. I began work in the Autumn, when the programme of tree felling and thinning out was in progress. Naturally enough, when there is chainsaw work going on, it is necessary to know the basic rules about working safely, such as wearing protective headgear, standing a good distance away from the tree being felled and so on. But I have noticed that these reminders have become less as time has gone on and we are engaged in different tasks. 

Now I don't mind at all being reminded of safety matters, since I am the kind of person who tends to get stuck into a task with enthusiasm, to the extent that I overlook, or am forgetful of the need to be careful.  But today was a day when two of us (The Birdman, and I) sustained some kind of small injury. 

We were doing more fencing work. There are many miles of footpaths in the County, which means many miles of fencing, wicket gates and stiles which need maintenance or repair.  Armed with a map and what The Birdman called "intelligence", we drove down some out-of-the-way country lanes to find our way to some rolling farmland, set among the disused quarries and mines of this limestone area.  I have described in previous  blog posts the process of clearing away any damaged or rotting fencing, digging post holes, installing the fence posts and then attaching any rails that are needed to complete the structure. 

There were several tasks on the list, the first of which was to replace a waymarking post. The old one was suffering from rot, so it was necessary to remove it, as we try to put the replacement as near as possible to the  old, if possible using the same hole.  Removing an old post might seem an easy job. This one gave us a few difficulties. We dug down and discovered that the bottom of the post, a good way underground, had a metal cross through it, thereby anchoring it securely. In the course of unearthing it, I was rocking the post back and forth in order to loosen the soil around it. During one of these wiggles, I managed to get my head in line with the post as I rocked it towards me, and gave myself quite a bump. After seeing that I was OK, my co workers fell about with hilarity, saying they had never seen anyone head-butt a post before. Very funny, I am sure!  The post finally came out and we were able to put in the new one.

I have been a bit concerned about the distribution of work when there are three of us. It is perfectly possible to stand aside and let the lads do it all, especially as I find some of the tools too heavy to use effectively. But I have found that I can take over and do a bit of digging for instance, when they pause for a rest. So they do most of the heavy work, which is fine because I am too slow if I do that. Instead I make myself useful by doing the fetching and carrying, sawing off bits of wood to make a neat job, and mixing cement for fixing the posts in position.  I am good at mixing cement, I know the proportion of chips to cement to water, and I know what it looks like when it is ready to use. The amounts we use for the posts is small, so we mix it with a spade on an old piece of hardwood, or whatever happens to be around.

After we finished work on this waymarking post, we drove the pickup down what used to be a lane to a farm. There were curlews and lapwings everywhere. I love their cries. The land is now a grassy strip between two stone walls. About half a mile further on we came to a pair of very large old iron gates across the lane, with a stile to one side.  We needed to open the iron gate, but it took three of us to lift it, it weighed a ton. They don't make them like that any more!  It was at this stile that we were to do our next job of installing a wicket gate.  This job proceeded more easily, as the soil was easy to dig, although in one of the post holes we encountered some stones that had to be crowbarred out.  The post hole was quite close to a dry stone wall, and whilst wielding the crowbar, The Birdman inadvertently banged his fingers between the crowbar and the stone wall. I think he received a quite painful bruise. There is nothing that health and safety can do to protect us against this kind of injury, other than being constantly aware of potential hazards. We installed two posts and some rails between them, but ran out of time before we were able to attach the gate. The lads would return the next day to finish the job.

Whilst we were there, one of the farmers drove up in his landrover to see what we were doing. He carefully explained who the land belonged to and asked if we had permission to be there. The conversation was polite and civilised, though at the same time there was an underlying tension I felt on both sides. Of course, it had all been cleared with the appropriate landowner. However it is easy to see how, on the one hand a farmer might feel annoyed if he thought that people were doing things without permission, whilst on the other hand the Countryside people are trying to do a job. It can easily lead to misunderstandings and bad feeling unless everything is sorted out beforehand. I think there is an uneasy relationship between the landowners across whose land the footpaths run, and the bodies who are charged with looking after them.