Apologies for the lack of blog over the last week, there have been a few issues with the community pages, but all seems to be running okay now, and we’re now trying to catch up with all that’s been going on down the reserve!
As I type the hide and boardwalk is nearing completion, and we're hoping it will be open to the Public very soon. Keep an eye on the blog to find out more.... In the absence of David (who's been away on a course this week), and Ali (who is still out of action with her broken thumb), Dave Rogers (Site manager) has written a post to update everyone on how the construction is going (to be posted soon). So I won't say anything about that!
I do want to do a bit of forewarning to people who may want to come and visit in the next few weeks though, as we're soon to be making tweaks to the paths surrounding the visitor centre. These will be quite major tweaks, particularly if you come regularly and like to walk from the car park, straight up to the washland viewpoint...
After numerous meetings and discussions, we've decided that we want to increase visitor flow through the visitor centre. Many visitors, new and returning, often don't come into the visitor centre, instead going straight up onto the Public Footpath and detouring round the visitor centre. Well, we're quite a friendly chatty bunch, and we like to meet and greet all of our visitors. We like to say what's around and what paths are good, and we like to find out what people have seen on their way round the reserve too!
So, how do we increase visitor flow? The only solution we could come up with is to direct all of our visitors straight to the visitor centre. To do this, we need to do a bit of path re-jigging. The plan is to remove the direct path that leads from the car park to the washland viewpoint, and create a new path that leads from the visitor centre, past the pond-dipping area and then up to the viewpoint from there. So you will still be able to access the washland viewpoint, just from a slightly different route via the visitor centre.
This work is due to start in the next few weeks, so if you are planning to visit, please be aware that there may be a little bit of disruption around the car park area. All of the trails will remain open however, and we will ensure that any disruption will be kept to a minimum. Watch this space for progress reports!
Cheers,
Katherine (Warden)