Marathon Work Party At Langdale and Ardwell

With a sunny fresh day forecast instead of the heatwave conditions of the past two outings, our squad of six Pathminders down at Langdale split into smaller units to tackle several jobs at once. Who said that men can’t multi-task?

John and Dave used “The Dunter” to daud in a large strainer post and mend a kissing gate

Tim, Howard and Kevin set about strimming the new path across the Big Gully, where the path was totally overgrown.

At the same time, Jimmy went walkabouts, contouring Downan Hill with the farmer, to check sites for new marker posts and signs to help walkers navigate a short but higher hill route to the shore path when the lower route is being strip-grazed by cattle. (See picture of our metal squeeze-stile in action alongside the clifftop fence).

These tasks completed, John, Tim, Howard and Kevin set off south with three strimmers to tackle the heavy forests of high bracken now obstructing the approach to Langdale march kissing gate from Currarie Post – where they did a power of work. But there will be another hard day’s darg needed to clear several other patches from there along to Currarie Port, and we hope to do this next week.

Meantime, Dave and Jimmy split off to lay anti-skid wire mesh on our new bridge on the shore route to Ballantrae.

They then went north to Ardwell to lay further anti-skid mesh and complete fitting handrails on the new sleeper steps – and were ‘last men standing’ – not getting home till after 4 o’clock!

So while walkers might encounter several uncut patches over about 1km of grassland just now, once through them the path should be clear all the way to Girvan – as hopefully Amey will be doing their second cut over Bennane in early July – which should be this week!