Surprisingly, three weeks have elapsed since my last post, it doesn't seem that long.The season has moved along in the meantime. The bluebells have been and gone (but I saw some on my travels, though not in such numbers), and the undergrowth of nettles, umbellifera (yarrow? cow parsely?), buttercups, and other flora are now waist high. Everything is incredibly green. In spite of that, the weather men have been saying that we have had the driest spring on record.
I've been away. I took a week out to go on a visit to the Outer Hebrides. This is something that has been on my list of "must do" for a while. I am attracted to wild, unspoilt places with a bit of wildlife and history thrown in, and the Outer Hebrides, or the Western Isles as they are called for administrative purposes fit that bill. Others have written at length about the birds, the seals, the wonderful "machair" or seaside meadows, so it is not my intention to repeat them. Other than to say it was a wonderful experience, apart from gale force winds that assailed us for most of the week. Even the locals were complaining that the weather was most unusual for this time of year. So I returned last week, ready for some more countryside work, but discovered that the office was in the throes of having a floor replaced, and everyone was busy with that.
I turned up this morning full of enthusiasm for the day's activities. My heart sank when I discovered that we were to do more fencing replacement. The last time we did this, where we were digging through asphalt and concrete, nearly put me off the job for good. However, as it turned out, today's was a straightforward job in comparison.
I reported in an earlier post, Two steps forward, one step back, 9/2/11, about the damage to the trail, that had been caused by heavy rains and blocked drains. Last week some contractors came in and did a lot of remedial work, which included digging out the main place where the blocked drain had caused the flood. Now I am not just talking about an ordinary drain here. It is a place where there is a stream in a deep gully on the uphill side, with a drain into a ditch at the side of the trail. The contractors used a digger to excavate about 4 metres of silt from this gully. Interestingly, this excavation revealed the original victorian stone arch and a massive drain which took the stream under the old railway. But the result of this work is that there is now a steep bank going down from the trail to the big hole and drain. The edge of the hole is unstable, so our job was to fence it off, to prevent the public from endangering themselves.
Today was a good lesson in how to put up post-and-rail fences. There was a lot of discussion initially about where to put the main posts, both in relation to the existing fence and the spacing between them. Also, we needed to decide whether to have the fence rails running level, or running parallel to the ground. Eventually we opted for the latter arrangement in order to minimise the space underneath the bottom rail. A fence consists of upright posts and horizontal rails between them, and sometimes subsidiary uprights in between the main posts. The combination of how these are put together varies according to the lie of the land. The main posts come with ready drilled holes, to enable the placement of the horizontal rails. When everything is in position, the whole thing is screwed together. As I said, it was a much easier job than the previous one, because the ground was, in the main part, soil. So the shove hole tool worked a treat, even I managed to work it. I also used the crowbar to prise out some rocks, did some shifting of earth with the spade, and made myself useful with the saw to trim off the rails to the appropriate size. I used the drill briefly to put some screws in, but my co-volunteer did most of this as he is pretty nifty with the drill. At one point during the construction, it became clear that the other volunteer was the wrong side of the fence and called out, "don't fence me in!" He had to finish putting the screws in, then retreat to the trail side of the fence before we could attach the last rail. All in all I think we did a good job, the result is sturdy and neat. I like doing this work, you get a great sense of achievement when you see the end product of your labours.
I've been away. I took a week out to go on a visit to the Outer Hebrides. This is something that has been on my list of "must do" for a while. I am attracted to wild, unspoilt places with a bit of wildlife and history thrown in, and the Outer Hebrides, or the Western Isles as they are called for administrative purposes fit that bill. Others have written at length about the birds, the seals, the wonderful "machair" or seaside meadows, so it is not my intention to repeat them. Other than to say it was a wonderful experience, apart from gale force winds that assailed us for most of the week. Even the locals were complaining that the weather was most unusual for this time of year. So I returned last week, ready for some more countryside work, but discovered that the office was in the throes of having a floor replaced, and everyone was busy with that.
I turned up this morning full of enthusiasm for the day's activities. My heart sank when I discovered that we were to do more fencing replacement. The last time we did this, where we were digging through asphalt and concrete, nearly put me off the job for good. However, as it turned out, today's was a straightforward job in comparison.
I reported in an earlier post, Two steps forward, one step back, 9/2/11, about the damage to the trail, that had been caused by heavy rains and blocked drains. Last week some contractors came in and did a lot of remedial work, which included digging out the main place where the blocked drain had caused the flood. Now I am not just talking about an ordinary drain here. It is a place where there is a stream in a deep gully on the uphill side, with a drain into a ditch at the side of the trail. The contractors used a digger to excavate about 4 metres of silt from this gully. Interestingly, this excavation revealed the original victorian stone arch and a massive drain which took the stream under the old railway. But the result of this work is that there is now a steep bank going down from the trail to the big hole and drain. The edge of the hole is unstable, so our job was to fence it off, to prevent the public from endangering themselves.
Today was a good lesson in how to put up post-and-rail fences. There was a lot of discussion initially about where to put the main posts, both in relation to the existing fence and the spacing between them. Also, we needed to decide whether to have the fence rails running level, or running parallel to the ground. Eventually we opted for the latter arrangement in order to minimise the space underneath the bottom rail. A fence consists of upright posts and horizontal rails between them, and sometimes subsidiary uprights in between the main posts. The combination of how these are put together varies according to the lie of the land. The main posts come with ready drilled holes, to enable the placement of the horizontal rails. When everything is in position, the whole thing is screwed together. As I said, it was a much easier job than the previous one, because the ground was, in the main part, soil. So the shove hole tool worked a treat, even I managed to work it. I also used the crowbar to prise out some rocks, did some shifting of earth with the spade, and made myself useful with the saw to trim off the rails to the appropriate size. I used the drill briefly to put some screws in, but my co-volunteer did most of this as he is pretty nifty with the drill. At one point during the construction, it became clear that the other volunteer was the wrong side of the fence and called out, "don't fence me in!" He had to finish putting the screws in, then retreat to the trail side of the fence before we could attach the last rail. All in all I think we did a good job, the result is sturdy and neat. I like doing this work, you get a great sense of achievement when you see the end product of your labours.
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