Filling in

Thursday 2^nd April

A day when the feeling of the weather changed from winter to spring as the day progressed. Again a dozen of the team in attendance, working at two sites. Both sites involved filling in work.

On the up side River Isbourne steps, John and Martin (J) installed the last two old car tyres. They filled these in with spoil and stone that was left in a dumpy bag in the yard. Ian was also working at Winchcombe, he assembled the two new brushcutters obtained with the Farming in Protected Landscapes grant. Later in the day he assisted the electricians undertaking PAT testing of our newly acquired mains electrical items. Meanwhile, after completing the Isbourne steps, John and Martin sorted out some of the lengths of old scaffolding that we are going to use a headwall safety markers.

The other nine team members were engaged on the Stowe Road drainage improvement at Toddington. Peter and Dave took the tipper Transit to collect a tonne of No1 stone from our supplier in Bishops Cleeve. Jonathan drove the telehandler up to Toddington; using this to tip into the ditch is more controlled than from the tipper Transit. Dee, Phil, Martin (S), Polly, Nigel and Andrew were the rest of the crew.

First job was to fit the blue mesh GRP chamber lid, which is bolted down. Then some left over stone from a pervious job went into the ditch. Next the we cut the length of half perforated pipe to fit the ditch and installed it. This did involve a slight enlargement of the hole in the chamber rings, as the pipe has a slight rise away from the chamber to ensure water flows. Then a final check of the pipe gradient and in went the stone collected from Bishops Cleeve. The one tonne we obtained was the perfect amount. 

Peter and Dave bolt down the blue mesh chamber lid.

Martin (S) fettles the hole for the pipe guided by Dee from above. We do not often have tasks best undertaken by lying down. [Photo by Dave]

The half perforated pipe in the ditch.

Using the telehandler ensures a more controlled deposit of No1 stone. [Photo by Dave] 

After lunch the ditch was in-filled to ground level. The telehandler proving useful here as the now dried clay is not easy to shovel by hand. Also we use the telehandler to extract the remaining length of bridge rail from the old fence. It, and the length removed last week, were loaded onto the LWB Transit and taken back to Winchcombe for use a milepost uprights. 

Extracting the upright length of bridge rail. 

Finally we cleared the site of all the metal, wood, concrete and vegetation debris, removing them to appropriate disposal sites at Toddington and Winchcombe. At the road end of the ditch we inserted a vertical length of large twin wall pipe. This is temporary shuttering, it will be removed when we install a concrete catchment area with a gutter gully. 

Securing the site with the temporary heras fence panels after clearing all the debris. Note the temporary vertical pipe as a placeholder for the run-off and gutter gulley.

Wildlife report: Certainly it is now spring – several lineside fields are bright yellow with oil seed rape; blackthorn is in full blossom, with pear trees and hawthorn starting to bloom. On the ground we spotted plenty of primroses and a few bluebell buds beginning to open. Also a lot of dandelions, probably the most overlooked spring flower. At Toddington we added Goldfinch to the list of observed bird species.