Written by Nichola Gill - Business Support Officer for the Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership
For the past few weeks I have helped organise a series of
events called The Spring Wood Big Wildlife Count, which is taking place over
the course of the summer. The first in the series, Wild Flowers and Bees, was
held on Saturday 5th June at Spring Wood, Whalley.
Meadows and Bees Survey at Spring Wood
Having only recently joined the Pendle Hill Landscape
Partnership team in February, I haven't had the opportunity to work from an
office, meet with people face to face, or get as involved with projects as I
perhaps could have done pre-covid. Given the restrictions, the majority of my
work has been carried out at home to date. I've also joined over halfway
through a well established project, as I am covering maternity leave until
December, so it's obviously been a strange start to my new job. Now that we are
finally able to get projects and activities up and running again, it was great
to get outside and meet people in person at Spring Wood. This being said, I'm
pretty sure my colleagues felt the same excitement that I did, as they have
spent the last year only engaging with audiences online.
Alongside my colleagues Carol, Sarah and Alison, we joined
10 keen nature recorders, who helped us to identify and record the species
living within this beautiful site. Some people used the iNaturalist app, which
we are using as a database to collect our findings, whilst others used pen and
paper. Common spotted orchid, red campion, germander speedwell, common mouse
ear, cuckooflower and ragged robin were amongst some of the wild flowers
logged. It was a fantastic event, and we had people of all ages and expertise,
some being bee and wild flower experts, and others having no experience at all.
The size of the meadow meant we could all safely socially distance
and enjoy spending time with each other in nature.
Bumblebee on Red Campion
We have since
held two more events, recording minibeasts on the 30th June, and
then tree species on the 8th July. Spring Wood now has over 661 separate
observations on the iNaturalist app, and we are hoping to build on this again,
with two more events in the pipeline – looking at bats and fungi (dates to be
confirmed).
In the
meantime, why not download the iNaturalist app and record your findings at your
own leisure, you could even take a trip to Spring Wood and help us build on our
Big Wildlife Count.
It's in our nature to explore, and when you live in the
heart of Lancashire, Pendle Hill has a natural draw from all sides.That natural draw still leads visitors to
certain gathering points (as you may have read in a previous blog post) and
then naturally from those points we often follow a path of least resistance.
Pendle Hill is no exception to that trend of people walking
along the same route, and why wouldn't they! It's one of the few places that it
is easy to gain the elevation of the wonderful view of Lancashire and its
surroundings in all its glory. This does however lead to other pressures on our
landscape.
The impact of people walking the same route eventually will
show and especially as an estimated 300,000 people ascend Pendle Hill a year,mainly following the same route.
There is some great drone footage on YouTube which shows
the impact which that number of visitors has had over the years and when you see the aerial footage, you really get an appreciation of what
damage footfall can do to a landscape.
As a Landscape Partnership and working as part of the Forest
of Bowland AONB we naturally want to encourage people to visit and appreciate
our landscape and Heritage and encourage and enhance the natural beauty of the
area. For us to reach these aims we have been working for the last 6 months to
restore and enhance the summit of Pendle Hill working from Pendleside to the Summit
Plateau.
But the question is where on earth do you begin? There are
so many tried and tested methods for footpath restoration that it's hard to
choose sometimes. As you can imagine we are not the only part of the U.K. to
encounter such issues and the Lake District has been working for some years now
to repair their trails and footpaths through an initiative called Fix the
Fells. They have a great factsheet here which explains how erosion develops and what factors can contribute to its
development.
How erosion develops
As you can imagine there is no one single contributory factor
in controlling erosion, Pendle Hill has an interesting geology because it
straddles the junction between older limestone to the north and west, and younger
gritstones to the south and east. This subsequently has influenced the development
of vegetation and land use. On the summit plateau the gritstone is close to the
surface, and the peat layer is very thin. This in part is why the braiding has
become so pronounced leading from the steps at the Big End to the Trig Point.
However, this actually works in our favour for the chosen restoration technique
of subsoiling.
Subsoiling is in effect a type of reprofiling of the ground. Using tracked diggers, the eroded line of the footpath has the top layer of
vegetation removed, followed by the removal of the subsoil or more stony
material. This in effect forms a ditch or low point and the subsoil then is
placed alongside the newly created low ground which becomes then the topsoil.
It is a more stony and robust surface for walkers to use. According to the
National Trust there is a psychology involved in building a path, people will always want to
follow a route for a reason and in the case of Pendle Hill it is generally the
view at the Trig Point.
In the Picture above you can see that the newly subsoiled path still leads
to the trig point, but follows a gentle meander so that the eye is drawn to the
end goal of the Trig allowing walkers to enjoy the view without being aware
that they are being gently guided. It's an art, you see!
From the Trig Point many walkers tend to choose to follow
the less steep cart track to descend the hill, which has demonstrated the other
great force that we have needed to consider in the contributory factor to
erosion of the paths, water! Water naturally will follow the path of least
resistance to its flow and in this case we have a wonderful water catchment
area that is the plateau of Pendle Hill with the easy route of the cart track.
Before
Photographs of before and after the work shows just how
water can change the profile of a path.
After
So what can you do to stop it? Well you
can never stop it, but you can guide it and on the Cart Track our contractors
Conservefor have used stone water bars to help shed
water from the edge of the path before it gets chance to pick up speed. By
slowing the water down and shedding it from the route of the path as often as
possible, it stops the water from scouring out the path.
So as you can see, it's so much more than just a bit of
surfacing work, it’s a true art form. I'm sure many will ask why haven't we
worked on other paths that lead to the Summit and that is a very good question,
and of course we would love to restore them all but sadly we are limited by
time and funding resources. In the future, it's not impossible to think that
these other routes will be restored but in the meantime we have to look after
the resources we have.
Part of the work
of Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership is to involve people in their environment,
this can be done in many ways including volunteering. We work on the first
Sunday and third Wednesday each month to restore and enhance our environment,
this will include trail maintenance as well as other conservation projects in
the Landscape Partnership area. If you feel that you would like to know more
please get in touch as we will be developing opportunities for as many as we can over the coming months.
Please also remember the Countryside code and if you are unsure of you Access rights, information can be found here including information about dog and bike restrictions on Pendle Hill.
In the meantime, the next time you are walking along a path
enjoying the natural environment, just spare a thought for the route and how it
has been managed for your enjoyment and how you can help others to enjoy it for
many years to come.
Now that you've waded through all of that, enjoy the
finished product.
