Weston & Fiveways - marker posts

Having had a successful morning over at Purslow Wood we decided to keep the momentum by installing a couple of marker posts that had been nagging at Mike for a few months. 

One of these was to go in near to Weston Farm on the way to the bat sanctuary at Cwm and the other at the head of the track at Fiveways leading down to Gripes Nest.

The whole job including travel only took about 90 minutes and was well worth the effort. All we need now is to get the tamper fixed!!

The new waymark post near Weston Farm

Fiveways and the new post

Purslow Wood area revisited

Mike and I met up with David Hardwick and his fellow worker Matt to finish off the stile we installed on the last visit in Purslow Wood (the second step needed finishing off) and to install a new stile making it into a double stile closer to Twitchen.

Starting to dig out the first hole

David and Graham watch Matt assemble the stile

Tamping in the two stile posts

Whilst David and Matt clattered off, Mike and I set to with a vengeance and very soon had untangled the wire fence and had dug the two holes for the new stile.  Before we installed the new stile though we had to take a fairly long walk up onto the Forestry Commission track to collect rocks for use in bracing up the stile posts.

The top step is lined up

then the lower step goes in

Davis uses the stile as an improvised ladde
to clear away the overhanging branches

The finished double stile

 After a bit of jiggling we eventually tamped in the 2 new posts and then installed the steps for the new stile - bridging the gap between the old stile and the new. Certainly a huge improvement on the previous arrangement.