Nidderdale Conservation Volunteers' Blog: How Stean Beck: 22-08-2017

This week the 14 NCVs who turned out had yet another date with footpath officer, Peter Lambert, at How Stean Beck. Although it’s a beautiful place to work we were reminded that it's an area where there are plenty of horseflies and midges; so insect repellent was a must have!

Will went for the lathering on of 'Skin So Soft'...

...whilst Osian adopted the full body armour approach.

(By the way - nice to have you back in the fold Osian. We've missed you while you have been involved with the 'London to Edinburgh and back' cycling event. Well done for completing the trip in the five day time limit.)

This time (we were assured) the work would be less gruelling than of late. Apparently the footpath needed us to "prune and cutting back branches & brambles, bash bracken, and improve the path surface in places". Well - this last task could mean anything. We were 'improving the footpath' last week at Toftgate and all went home shattered. We were 'improving the footpath' at the end of July at Wath and that consisted of shifting 10 tonne of gravel! So you can understand why we tried not to feel too complacent as we arrived.

And one group was right to do so.
A set of stone steps had to be made and drainage had to be improved.

Mud had to be shifted...

...and stones had to be lifted.

Melissa got down to the serious business of getting muddy (again)

and made sure that the stepping stones were laid without a wobble.

What a team - excellent steps guys!

Meanwhile - further along the footpath - the other
members of the group were faced with walls of very high bracken.

There was only one thing to do - bash it.
Gradually the footpath became visible again.

James returned a volley to Jan with a nifty back-hander.
Game, set and match!

Every so often loppers, instead of sticks and slashers,
would need to be deployed.

After coffee time it was noticed that there
were tree tubes hidden amongst the bracken.

Well - you just have to do something to free them, don't you?

Suddenly there were tree tubes visible all over the hillside.
However - this wasn't actually part of the task brief
so we couldn't spend too long doing it.
Many more trees still lie hidden in the bracken.

We needed to go and have lunch where we had a real problem; namely
- exactly which cake to choose? Today we were spoilt for choice.

Osian's brownies or Julia's chocolate cake?

Alwin's lemon drizzle or banana loaf?
The only answer to the dilemma was to have some of each.

Then began the walk up to Low Riggs farm to continue bracken bashing.
At least this helped us to walk off some of the calories we had consumed.

As we made our way downhill, once again the footpath was revealed.
This was a path that we'd made in February.

Back then it was virtually bare of vegetation.

Not any more!!

We found some of the wood we'd used that had got forgotten...

...so this was rescued and taken to the top of the hill.

Back down at river level the stepping stones,

put in back in February, had to be negotiated.

Jan prepared to give us a song.

Gentleman Dave lent a hand.

Job over, all that was left to do was walk
up the 2 mile track back to the cars.

This part of the path was rich in different species of fungus.
Anyone know the name of this giant one?
(it was found under a birch tree - porous underneath rather than gills).

Ros E.

Additional news:

Last week five of the NCVs joined James for a two day stone carving course with Sculptor Joseph Hayton. According to Tony K.:

"Joe is an excellent teacher, kept us supplied with coffee, biscuits, advice and encouragement and we all enjoyed the two days. We started off on day one with a piece of stone on which to carve letters and then progressed to whatever it was we wanted to produce. Joe gave help with ideas ..., as well as practical intervention and cleaning up errors and messy work. Mine was supposed to be a raptor but it kept changing shape as I knocked off bits I shouldn’t have."