We have closed the walk to do some major work on the path along the lower edge of the meadow as you head toward the woodland walk.

A combination of the old victorian ceramic pipes being crushed, heavy rains and some poorly laid out drainage piping and the discovery of a spring has lead to major issues in this area.

The fist stage of this project was to dig down on the lower edge of the path and find out where the newly fit drainage pipes were. Surprisingly they were 4 feet down and had been recovered with clay which was causing a major backup. After clearing a huge trench 4 feet deep along a large cation of the path and making holes in the pipe the water started to flowing out.

Stage two is to lay down large pipe with vertical pipes that will come up above the ground level sort of like man holes which we can inspect the flow of water with and if necessary use a pressure she to spray down and clear the flow. Each of the vertical pipes will have rocks mounded up around them to disguise the piping and we can make a feature of them.

There has always been an unusually soft and soggy area just at the end of the path and we thought this was just part of the drainage issue but have discovered that is a natural spring so now we must work out how to feed this into the rest of the drainage to eliminate this problem.

As all these wonderful projects go not long into the initial digging of the trench a pin came loose in the digger which held the arm on and we had to figure out how to refit it. What a difficult chore that was but in the end we had success! Not to mention the sudden downpours which seem to be a common occurrence of late and I was caught out in the trench as one of these happened and was up to my knees in water in moments!!!