Workday on the Ashby Woulds Heritage Trail

Anybody cycling along the Ashby Woulds Heritage trail between Moira and Donisthorpe over the last few years will have seen an improvement to the surface of the path.

Following a review of the route several sections were earmarked for improvement.  Being based on an old railway line is beneficial in terms of being traffic free and generally flat or only facing slight gradients.  However there are challenges in maintaining cycle paths based on railway lines due to the vegetation coverage that surrounds the embankment and cuttings. 

A section before the workday

Over time the vegetation fall onto the path and builds up and eventually turns to mud which when wet creates a poor surface.  Scraping the surface of the path is not easy and requires hard work, which has fortunately been done for us by Community Payback teams.  Certain sections have since been worked on by the Leicestershire County Council ranger team in terms of cutting back the vegetation to minimise the effect of the vegetation going forward.

This work has been done in-between Moira and Donisthorpe except for 1 small section just south of the Youth Hostel.  With Community Payback teams focusing on other areas of priority in Measham we decided to have a workday to resolve some of the problem areas on this small stretch used by cyclists, walkers and park-runners.

Plenty of tools needed!

We had advertised the workday amongst the local community and park-run to attract help and give people an insight into our work but ultimately it was our rangers Shawn, Robert, Alan, Megan, Chris and Myself that met at the Youth Hostel. We then walked down the path and worked around 2 areas of obvious concern although they had dried out since our last inspection.  Using shovels and spades we did what we could scraping the mud off the surface back to the gravel layer.

Alan, Shawn, Chris, Megan & Robert take a well earned breather

After the work.

We faced a challenge from the fact that the path seemed to act like a bowl on the embankment with no real for of drainage so a couple of small drainage channels were dug in where appropriate.  It would have good to have had some material to place back on the path to level it out but this is something to look into going forward.

After a couple of hours of graft and some words of encouragement from the passing public we then retreated to the nearby Youth Hostel Cafe for a drink, cake and a meeting.  We'd discussed how the scraping was difficult and had noted that there were sections of path which were currently ok but had early vegetative build-up that could be brushed or scraped away more easily.

The next project.

Shawn working hard with the brush.

We decided to put the theory to the test on some of the paths near to the Youth Hostel and Campsite at the junction of the Conkers Circuit.  This section is a good tarmac surface with a little build up of vegetation on the sides.  Armed with stiff brushes and more enthusiasm we started to brush back the build up.  Sadly Robert's brush didn't match his enthusiasm and came to a sad demise after a short time.  Within an hour though we'd made some good progress and will look to continue the work in the near future.