Your correspondent is not looking for sympathy, but he had a shocking cold this morning, and as it was only a week before Christmas, we had a short session – short in terms of time (10 am to 11.15 am), but long on achievement.
We had an excellent turn out, meeting in the Stairfoot Lane carpark. While a handful of us went off litter picking, a merry band set off to clear the drainage pipe under Crag Lane near the picnic tables, and thence to repair and tidy up the Stairfoot Lane steps.
Near the picnic tables, there is a stretch of Crag Lane which was regularly impassable until December 2012 (five years ago, almost to the day) when we put a drainage pipe under part of the track, and put several tons of hardcore over it.
The drainage pipe has worked a treat for five years but it had become blocked. How blocked only became apparent when we started work. The pipe was chocka with mud. We had to cut down a small sapling and fashion a drainage rod to clear the pipe. Having cleared the pipe, we dug a channel for water to run into the pipe and flow into the undergrowth below the path.
We then moved on to our second task: repairing and tidying up Stairfoot Lane steps.
These were funded by Leeds City Council and installed by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers in August 2012. Friends of Adel Woods helped Steve Joul to extend the top end of the steps in October 2012.
After five years, some of the timber is beginning to rot, and we repaired one of the steps today, as well as clearing leaf litter from the whole length of the steps.
Having tidied up the steps we went our separate ways, and your correspondent retired to bed for four days. He has now made a complete recovery.
Friends of Adel Woods 