Our latest session took place on Thursday 26th May.
The weather could have been kinder,
with several heavy showers to soak us. We were joined by Steve Archer and Nige from the County Council. We planned to install a new stile on the side of the B5027 near the Wheatsheaf, a hazardous location so they parked a Land Rover on the road to protect us from the traffic.
We cut back the hedge, removed a section of fence and installed a new stile. The old finger post was rotten so this was replaced.
Having completed this we also planned to repair a stile near Coton Mill Barns on the Sandon Estate.
As can be seen, the stile was at a steep angle leading on to a sleeper bridge – extremely dangerous when wet. On investigation it was discovered that the bank under the bridge had collapsed, causing the bridge to drop significantly.
It was agreed that we would carry out a temporary repair, we raised the bridge, shored it with a new piece of timber and then secured these in place with posts sunk into the bank. A new step was then nailed in place.
This repair makes the footpath much safer but will require further work later this year including replacing the bridge and new stiles at either end.
We are grateful to Steve and Nige’s expertise, without their help and advice we may not have tackled this job correctly.
By now the team was feeling rather wet and bedraggled so we adjourned to the Green Man for some well earned pints!
