1.10.10: Tuckingmill- filling in potholes for the council, digging drainage channels and building French Drain, repaired post and wire fence and gorse cutting.
Tuckingmill Valley is the base for the BTCV office in Cornwall and has its own management plan (Tuckingmill Valley Park Management Plan 2009). This was once a derelict site and here we can see the transformation.
The land at Tuckingmill is owned by Cornwall County Council and today we filled in potholes with asphalt delivered by CORMAC. They arrived and dumped a lorry load of tarmac for us ready to shovel into a wheelbarrow and fill in the potholes in various places around the Park.
There has also been a lot of standing water and channels made by excess water running into footpaths. For this problem we dug drainage channels away from the paths and filled a hole with rocks and stones in a French drain soakaway style for the water to drain into. Fortunately it was raining very heavily so we could easily see standing water, where water was running across the footpaths and what potholes were the biggest!
After this task was complete we worked on some habitat management in the Park. We cleared back gorse from an old capped mine shaft and fixed a post and wire fence as strangely enough someone had dug up one of the posts and moved it forward into a new hole. The post was wobbly which had also caused the slacking of the wire of the fence. We tamped the post back into its original position and used a post driver to help with the process and used a tensioning tool to tense the wire back to its original tension.
5.10.10: Camel Trail (Grogley Holt) Cutting back Rhododendron and chipping it.
Cornwall council requested us to remove Rhododendron here as it was becoming a health and safety risk to members of the public due to growing up a steep bank with a risk of branches falling onto people. Rhododendron is also a species of conservation concern as it is invasive and poisons the soil underneath it. If you ever notice Rhododendron growing anywhere you will notice that underneath the Rhododendron there is most probably nothing growing.
This was a good team work day. We had volunteers up the steep banks cutting and chain-sawing down Rhododendron, spotters to check that members of the public/dogs were not passing by at the moment the branches were thrown down/sawn off onto the path for others to trim down ready to drag to and go into the woodchipper pile/logpile. Then we had the people operating the woodchipper which was the ranger for Cornwall County Council and my line manager. The path also needed raking to clear any mess we had made such as thin twigs and branches so the path was clear for cyclists (we didn’t want twigs to be getting caught in the cyclists wheel spokes causing accidents), walkers and their dogs. It was also important to keep our tools close by and ensure that any inquisitive dogs would not step onto any saw blades!
08.10.10: Ponsanooth- Erecting Chestnut Paling Fencing around a pond and making a woodchip path.
Today we were at an open green space which was part of the BBCs Breathing Places. The schedule for the day included erecting Chestnut Paling Fencing around a pond to make this green space a safer area for members of the public to walk around and constructing a path around the area to create a nature walk.
Chestnut paling fence.
The path was constructed by digging up the grass using mattocks, spades and shovels. The path was then lined with a Burlap type material and filled with woodchip.
It took good teamwork skills to erect the Chestnut Paling Fence as it arrives already constructed but it just needs unravelling (heavy and unwieldly!) and fixing to fence posts while being tensed and level at the top and bottom.
The fence post holes were measured apart and then dug out using iron bars, shovolers, spades and shovels. The posts were banged into the hole using a post driver and mallet and the soil added around the base of the pole and tamped in.
15.10.10: Goss Moor - gorse and willow cutting/burning and path widening.
We were requested to do some work on this National Nature Reserve (NNR) by Natural England who are responsible for looking after this area. The reason we were here today was to widen the pathway along the River Fal that runs through Goss Moor and to clear gorse that had enroached upon this area that is known for its open wetland, important for many species. We saw Snipes today and i was informed by one of the volunteers that people that shot snipes were called snipers and they used to have to hide in the bushes as Snipes are so fast.. this is where Snipers get their name from.
The pathway along the river had become overgrown with Willow Carr which was totally taking over the river and the pathway along the river. The gorse needed clearing to make way for parking for people to use the Goss Moor multi use trail. This was cut down using saws, loppers and then it was burnt with a controlled fire. Before starting a controlled fire it is important to ring Fire Safety and inform them of what you are burning, location and the start and finish times. This is so that if members of the public ring in to report seeing a fire, the Fire Safety group will be able to look at their records and see that it is a controlled fire.
26.10.10: Luxulyan - drainage and vegetation clearance.
Luxulyan Valley is a beautiful area to work in with the river cascading by ancient trees and buildings. We met the ranger at the site for more informatiom on what needed doing and where. As part of the restoration process for the Wheel Pit building, vegetation was removed form the walls and ground using loppers, slashers spades and shovels.
Above shows the building we were removing vegetation from.
The drainage around the building was blocked up and needed re-doing. This involved digging out all of the drainage pebbles in the drainage channel, removing the old drainage pipe that had become blocked and replacing it with a new one with the old drainage pebbles put underneath it, around it and on top of it. This was quite a tricky process as we only had a small area to work in and had to wheelbarrow all of the drainage pebbles to another area before we could remove the old drainage pipe. This photo shows the drainage channel just below the wall
29.10.10: Sancreed Beacon - Heathland management, rhododendron burning, path widening and brushcutting for English Heritage. One reason being, that Rhododendron is a foliar host for Sudden Oak Death Disease which is now spreading to heathland.
We started today by lighting a fire to get the heat up for the burning of the Rhododendron. This was a controlled fire and Fire Safety were rung up as usual to inform them of the details of the burn. This day was spent mainly cutting Rhododendron, dragging it to the fire area to be cut down to fire-size pieces and there were a couple of brushcutter-trained people widening a pathway for public use - cutting back heather and gorse.
