In my January work party blog, I explained that the excavation of the pit at the Darnford Moors site, adjacent to the Golf Club House, had taken up most of our time and effort. This work (although nearly finished by the end of January), required many finishing touches. The base of the excavation needed to be given a final levelling and raked smooth. Where the culvert sections are going to be placed needed to be marked out so that when the first culvert section is placed in the excavation it would be in its correct position and therefore all the subsequent sections would neatly nestle up to it in a nice straight line. During the excavations, a water pipe had been damaged. The repaired pipe needed to be buried well down so that the concrete sections will not crush it. The excavated pit posed a risk to players on the golf course. To address this problem we erected a high visibility fence around it. However this was deemed a bit of an eyesore and not very secure, so this was replaced with a split chestnut picket fence as a more permanent solution.
Other work at Darnford Moors was carried out beyond the lift bridge, but here we are now short of materials and work here has come to a halt till this situation changes.
At Tamworth Road site there is no change in the situation there, where we are lacking in permissions regarding the ‘big pipe’ in pound 25 and also lacking permissions across the road in Darwin Park. So, nothing to report from this site.
During the second half of February we have been working at the Fossway site, giving Roger a hand with the ‘wet-lands area’ project. Much work has been done, moving soil, laying bricks, dismantling the original brick lining supporting the tow-path prior to rebuilding it. We have been working on the line of a future footpath alongside the railway embankment, to keep the walking public away from any danger by our work area, to name just a few of our tasks. Fortunately, there is plenty of work to keep us busy here for a bit till we can get back to Darnford Moors or Darwin Park , or both, in the near future.
Thanks, as usual, to our merry volunteers for their time and comradeship.
Hugh Millington
