After the wettest June on record and floods in Milwich last week, conditions around the footpath network are (to put it mildly) extremely wet!! As a result, many of the priority jobs that we have planned were completely inaccessible by vehicle and we would have risked a severe case of trench foot had we tried to undertake them. At least Sunday dawned bright and dry, Jeff, Peter, Richard and Paul were ready to tackle whatever was thrown at them.
Following a review on Saturday of all the sites where work was necessary, only two jobs were both accessible and passed the risk analysis for working conditions. Of these the highest priority was a stile replacement on Potmans Lane so this was the job we decided to tackle. This stile is on the Fradswell Park walk in the Milwich Walks booklet (have you got your copy?).
The stile is approached from Potmans Lane by a sleeper bridge across a ditch. On excavation we discovered that half the bridge had collapsed due to completely rotten timber. The other part was sloping at 30 degrees and very slippery. It was decided to replace the bridge and install new steps before we could replace the stile. This involved a trip back to Milwich to obtain more materials to construct a bridge.
The ditch was excavated and a new bridge was put in place, utilising the original sleeper that was still sound. We then fabricated some steps up to the stile. In the meantime, Richard had removed the old rotting stile and dug some holes for the new stile. Following a coffee break, we nailed a stile kit together and it dropped neatly into the holes. Once in place we were able to put new stile steps in place utilising the existing holes and we had a useable stile. Certain members (Paul) need more training in hitting a nail squarely but the end result was solid.
All that remained was to install a dog gate alongside the stile and fix the signage and it was down to the Green Man by 12.30 pm for some well deserved liquid refreshment. The full story in pictures can be seen below.
