Time for a monthly update on some of what Dove Stone's wardens and volunteer crew have been up to over the last few weeks. Thanks go to John for keeping us up to date with this.
' another day on the bog restoration site south of Chew reservoir. We drove up to Chew reservoir and then had a forty minute walk across the open moor to get to the work site. We installed some bales where possible, but as last week we were limited by the bales' tendency to self-destruct due to the fragility of the biodegradable string which should have been holding them together. Whilst we worked a Kestrel flew back and forth over the moor hunting...
Kestrel
...ran out of useable bales so we finished early and moved the tools to a site further north (nearer to Chew reservoir) ready for Friday's work party. We saw a Mountain hare whilst walking back to Chew reservoir. The weather was cool with one sharp shower and then cleared up on the walk back...
Mountain Hare
...more work installing self-destructing heather bales on the bog restoration site south of Chew reservoir. The bales are in poor condition as they are the ones we couldn't install before having to stay off the moor during the breeding season. As well as working on bog restoration we've put in a mink raft in Chew Brook to see if we have Mink present in the valley. The mink raft will be checked regularly, the damp clay part of the raft top will record the footprints of any inquisitive animals which swim onto the raft...
American Mink
...A hot sunny day, complete with hungry midges, was the setting for a work party of nine at Ashway Gap. We worked on repairs to a dry stone wall that runs next to a path near the picnic area. To rediscover parts of the wall we had to remove some of the Rhododendron that infests the area, as the wall is quite close to the site of Ashway Gap House which was demolished in 1981.
Ashway Gap House, circa 1980. Image courtesy of Saddleworth Museum Archive.
As it was sunny, it was a busy day with lots of visitors enjoying themselves round the reservoir. Unfortunately some of them on the bank opposite to us were "tombstoning" into the reservoir from a rocky outcrop. No-one was injured on this occasion, but there have been serious accidents at the reservoir resulting from this behaviour in the past.
We've also carried on with rebuilding work on the drystone wall running down the edge of the "six pines" field on the eastern bank of Dove Stone reservoir. We're continuing work that we started some weeks ago, it is a long wall and is built from stones which are every shape except rectangular which makes progress slow. The stone in some parts of the wall which were still standing had slumped to one side and we had to pull those parts down and rebuild them up again from the foundations.
Towards the end of August we had a change of venue with seven of us meeting at Crowden to do some footpath maintenance on a path which goes from the Outdoor Education Centre to join the Pennine Way. We pulled out some old steps which looked like they were made from old railway sleepers and replaced them with steps which we made on site from planks and stakes - like the steps we replaced at Dove Stone main entrance. This was quite a tiring day as we needed to knock the retaining posts in using heavy post-drivers and we worked late to ensure that the section we worked on was completely finished. It was very quiet, we were only disturbed by one walker all day, quite a contrast to working at Dove Stone. The weather was mainly fine but it did rain and thunder a couple of times.
Crowden
After that it was back to Dove Stone and a work party of five continued rebuilding the wall in the "six pines" field on the eastern bank of Dove Stone reservoir. Today included work to remove the tenacious grass that has grown over the top of the wall near the path round the reservoir. We also spent time digging out the fallen stone where it had got overgrown with grass and bracken. Today was a busy day with plenty of visitors and we had lots of comments and questions from people walking on the path. They wanted to know what we were doing, took photos and made very complimentary comments about the work we were doing on the wall and on the area in general '
More soon with an update on what's about at Dove Stone this week...