Trail Maintenance Report (24th March Session)

Yesterday saw a committed group of 10 volunteers from GMBC & Meet Up turn up for the latest trail maintenance session.  The day’s work was again focused on the Riverside path as some of the earlier work needed improving now that we’ve learnt a bit more and the path has had some use since the it was first worked on.

The first task of the day was to send Mark, Skinny Simon, Chris J and George along to a section that had been worked on a few weeks ago.  Maggie (the park ranger) had decided we could use gravel and geotextile along a short stretch of path which was cut as a detour to a muddy bog.  Many wheelbarrow loads of gravel & a load of sweath & toil later and the guys had created a fantastic path which should bed in really nicely and provide a good surface for walkers and bikers alike.  The geotextile will stop the gravel sinking into the ground, there are 2 drainage pipes running underneath, the path is at a slight camber to help water run off to the side and it’s lined by rocks and fallen timber to make the path obvious and keep the gravel from moving too far.  Great effort guys, well done!

Trail Improvement

The other could of squads of workers tackled other sections doing work such as lowering the edge of the path (de-berming) and improving the camber of the path to encourage water to run off.  There was another section at a rocky crossing which had been improved during the 11th Feb session but where the transition from hard rock to soft earth had started to create a puddle so a short section of gravel and geotextile was used to fix that problem.  A couple of widening sections were discretely narrowed using fallen timber to keep traffic to the main path.

Work Crew

It looks like we’ll be organising a further session some time in April, exact date TBC so watch this space.  Thanks to all those who’ve contributed so far, a great effort by all and very much appreciated by the park rangers!

Latest photos – shows some before & after shots for comparison.