Voluntary Work Over The Past Couple Of Weeks

Over the past couple of weeks we have been heavily involved with volunteering both with Wild Ennerdale at Bleach Green & The National Park for bridge surveying. Our work at Bleach Green was continued car park clearance, hedge laying & Juniper & Birch planting on Crag Fell. Not a bad view from the "office" window planting trees Rather steep workplace though Removing Juniper from their plant pots with the aid of a stick (which had the second purpose of something for Crag to chase after!) Then us & Bernie hedge laying at the entrance to the car park We have also managed to complete some bridge surveys. On a misty day we headed over to Gosforth where we surveyed this bridge on Kid Beck Just starting to rot at one end, but not dangerous & the paths around didn't look like it was heavily used.

Andy checking how bad the rot was with a penknife

Crag prefers to play in Kid Beck

Loads of frogspawn in the marshy fields

Crag is rather wary of it though

The weather is starting to improve as we survey this bridge on a tributary of the River Irt in Santon

Is this really a bridge?

Loads of daffodils waiting to bloom in the wood

And our final bridge of the day

This week we headed to Eskdale to survey the bridges in Stanley Ghyll. The first three need surveying every six months (as opposed to a year or two years) as they are a popular route upto Stanley Force Waterfall.

The first bridge looks fine

We were not sure if there had been some erosion to the abutment, but as we are back in six months we can compare this picture to then Stanley Ghyll travels through a deep wooded gorge

To the next bridge

And climbs to the third just before the waterfall lookout

The third bridge has a strange feature of a stile in the middle

Stanley Ghyll Force is an impressive 60ft drop

We then backtracked over the third bridge to a route to the overlook of the falls. The fourth bridge will need some repairs soon.

Not a great overlook, well from as close to the edge that is that we were willing to go to!

We were surprised after being enclosed in the green gorge to find above the falls was open moorland

This boardwalk is also a bridge, but rather poached where Andy is standing & through the grass you could see no one was using this & a new path had been formed to avoid it

This bridge leads over Stanley Ghyll above the falls

The water peaceful here unaware of the drop to come

These bridges come in all shapes & sizes, was there ever a stream running under here? If there was it could never have been that deep.

A good walk & an impressive waterfall, we will be back again to check on the first three in September.