Our first working Part event of 2015 was something a little different. With the support of The Conservation Volunteers we were led in a two-day step-building course which has trained us up to complete a long set of steps that will restore an early Georgian Footpath through Penpole Wood.
The path links the main, top path through the woods, and one that clings to the hillside about halfway down and dates from the mid Eighteenth Century. The linking path between the two appeared on maps until the 1970s and has gradually fallen out of use as trees have fallen across it and the path surface degraded.
Our January work is just the start of this project to reinstate it. We installed about 20 steps over the two-day training course which covered the two most hazardous areas on the route. The bottom part of the path had been lost beneath laurels and rubble, but now has fifteen new wooded steps allowing safe traffic to the main part of the path, and the top section where it meets the main Penpole Wood footpath has also got much improved access.
We are really grateful for The Conservation Volunteers for training us in this work and we hope to be able to complete the path with the remaining 40 steps over this year.
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The Conservation Volunteers are helped to unload by KWAG volunteers
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The second of the stone steps drops into place at the bottom of the path at the start of work on Day 1
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Looking up the slope with the location of the first few steps taking shape
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Looking down the slope to the first of the steps going in
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Mid-morning on Friday, Day 1, and the first of the timber steps begin to drop into place
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The first timber step goes in
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KWAG volunteers working on the first few steps
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Mid-day, day 2, and the bottom steps before heavy rain stopped play.
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Coffee break time for KWAG volunteers in the woods!
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Coffee break time looking from the new stone steps towards the timber ones in the distance. The stones, relics of the demolition of Penpole Lodge, lie scattered around
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The finished stone steps at the very bottom of the path that we are restoring. Just a week ago the path was invisible and blocked by laurels.
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The first few of the top steps close to Penpole Lodge ruins
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Volunteers from The Conservation Volunteers helped with the work on Day 2, here just at the top end of the steps on the Penpole Wood path
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Day 2 and the top set of steps, off the main path through Penpole Wood take shape.
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Looking towards Kings Weston House, not far from the ruins of Penpole Lodge. This is the historic location where the path we are restoring descended into the woods.
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Chris and the huge hole half way along the path , that he almost single-handedly filled in to enable the path to safely pass across it once more.
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