Steve Joul has been sending me photos of interesting things he has seen over the last month, and I thought I would share some of them. Mother Nature is always presenting us with something beautiful or awesome to see!
These are pictures taken by Steve at Killingbeck Fields while his wife was doing the shopping in Asda. Click on the pictures to get a better view.
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With the country anxious about covid 19, and the threat of further lockdown restrictions being imposed in Leeds as from tomorrow, it was unclear how many Friends would take part in today’s event.
In the event, four of us met up with Steve Joul in Buckstone Road at 10 am, on quite a pleasant morning.
Judith, our intrepid treasurer, had set her heart on cleaning out the bowl of the Slabbering Baby which was full of stones and rather unpleasant mud.
The rest of us made our way to Mill Fall Pond, or Adel Pond as it is also known.
The pond was constructed many years ago to provide water for a Flax Mill which used to operate from this site. Steve Joul and volunteers rescued it from becoming dry land about twenty five years ago and each year Friends of Adel Woods spend a morning in October clearing out the stones and logs – which seem to be thrown into the pond by passersby throughout the year – and the silt which has been washed into the pond by the ditches which feed it.
Steve and your correspondent got togged up in waders and made our way cautiously into the pond – cautiously, because you don’t want to trip on an underwater obstacle, step into a deep chasm or disturb the monsters of the deep!
As usual we found plenty of very large logs and stones and removed them before embarking on the task of removing buckets of silt. Usually we have quite a large team, but today we started with two of us in the pond filling the buckets and two of us transporting the buckets of mud away for tipping down the nearby bank.
After about an hour, David set off to clear one of the ditches feeding the pond. Last year we cleared the ditch and inserted a pipe under the bridge leading down from the Meanwood Valley Trail but we were surprised to find a fortnight ago that the pipe was no longer visible as mud now covered it and completely blocked the space under the bridge. David came armed with his drainage rods as well as a couple of spades specifically to rectify the situation.
An hour’s hard work and the ditch was as good as new!
We finished work at about 12.20 and all that remained was to clean the waders and tools in Nanny Beck before returning home for a well-earned Sunday lunch!
Friends of Adel Woods 