This last week has seen storms across the country, 140mph winds in Scotland. We were treated to a lesser version of the storms, but the worst of it was about 36 hours of non-stop, heavy rain. The ground is already sodden from the snow melt and showers off and on since, so this caused some flooding of roads in the district.
The nature trail, which is the responsibility of the County Council service for which I volunteer my labour, runs for 3 miles along a defunct railway line, between a village and a town. When we came to this area ten years ago, it was a muddy, litter strewn track, badly overgrown with vegetation on both sides.
In the interim, the service has overseen some great improvements. About five years ago, some funding was obtained to reconstruct the trail for its entire length, which included some major rebuilding and re-routing at the town end. Outside contractors dug it out, laid proper foundations and applied a top layer of grit. The trees and undergrowth on both sides were trimmed back, and over the intervening years have been thinned, the litter removed, and the whole generally tidied up. (I should point out here that “tidy” is not a word that the rangers and wardens like to use, as they associate it with gardeners whose obsessive tidiness reduces the places that harbour wildlife.) They dug drainage culverts on either side and laid pipes in various places under the trail to drain away the water to the lower slopes and into the river below.
The recent rainfall was of such volume that at one particular stretch, the drains quickly became clogged with leaves and other detritus, causing the fast flowing water to stream over the trail. It has created several deep gullies where the layers showing the construction of the track have been exposed. One of the team estimates that it is an outside contract job, it cannot be repaired by the existing team, and that the damage will cost in the region of £230,000. This is at a time when there is no money for anything that the public services provide. A man was sent out with a rake to shift some of the looser material back into the gullies, but this seemed to me to be no more than cosmetic. I asked why we could not all set to with some shovels. But no, the foundation hardcore comes from a specific quarry, the surface grit comes from a limestone supplier 30 miles away and has to be matched to maintain the quality of the surface. This all involves transport and expertise, plus the cost of the raw materials. I confess I was horrified by this. The service is always banging on about reducing hazards to the public, yet here they seem content to do nothing until the lengthy process of procuring money, hiring contractors etc is put in place. I will await developments on this and see what happens next week.
My day with the service this week was more treework, but I have noticed that I am now allowed to work more on my own, so the lads must think I am getting the hang of things. Some of the work was near to a property which shares a boundary with the trail. My task was to use the loppers to clear away the undergrowth near to the man’s fence, so that he can get in and paint it with wood preserver. I was cautioned to proceed carefully here because “last year there was a bullfinch nest in the scrub somewhere”.
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