Tag Archives: Adel woods

Today was a day for litter picking and path clearing. We had a team of four litter pickers and eight of us doing the path clearing.

In the two hours we achieved a heck of a lot.

The first job of the path clearers was to clear a drainage pipe on Crag Lane near the picnic area. We put the drainage pipe in with Steve Joul a number of years ago and it has improved the path considerably. Unfortunately, it gets clogged up with mud over the year and needs regular clearing. We cleaned out the mud, made a channel for the water to run away, and scraped away a lot of mud from the surface of the footpath, and by the time we had finished, water was flowing through the pipe nicely.

We then moved on to removing a fallen tree from one of the paths leading from the picnic tables.

Having removed the tree, some of us remained to cut back holly while the rest of the team made their way to Adel Pond with a view to clearing one of the ditches which supplies the pond.

En route, they found another fallen birch tree and removed it from the footpath.

The task at the pond was to clear mud from a ditch under a footbridge. The space under the bridge was completely blocked. However, with sturdy work with trenching spades and drainage rods, which David had brought with him, we were able to clear a channel and insert a length of drainage pipe, enabling water to flow under the bridge without hindrance.

It is amazing what you can achieve in two hours!

Our annual tasks seem to come round faster and faster! Today it was the time of year to help Steve Joul clean silt from Adel Pond. We were due to do this yesterday (Saturday), but with heavy rain on Friday and the forecast for even worse weather on Saturday, clearing on Sunday, we made a late decision on Friday to change the job to Sunday. As it turned out, it was an excellent decision: it rained heavily all day on Saturday, but on Sunday it was a beautiful morning.

Despite the late change, we had an excellent turnout. You could call the pond clearing a marmite job – some people hate it and some people love it. Your correspondent is someone who really enjoys it – despite the hard work and mud!

We met on Buckstone Road and a couple of people headed off to pick up litter while the rest of us followed Steve’s truck down to the Slabbering Baby.

This task involves a number of different roles: some of us like to put on waders and get in the pond, removing stones and logs which somehow arrive during the year, and loading trugs or buckets with mud from the bottom of the pond. The filled containers are then handed to workers on the bank who transport the mud away from the pond and pour it away downstream of the pond.

Others like to clear the ditches feeding the pond.

It was a beautiful morning and a very enjoyable way to spend it!

It is that time of year again: the time of year when certain people get the urge to put on their waders and frolic in the mud of Adel Pond.  And despite a dire weather forecast of rain all morning as Storm Callum hit the UK,  we had a great turn out of eight Friends to  help Steve Joul dredge Adel Pond and pick up litter.

Ditch clearing

In the event, it didn’t rain at all, and it was a pleasant morning in Adel, even though the rain apparently pelted down all day only a few miles away in Harrogate!

Two of our team litterpicked.  The rest of us set off down the path from Buckstone Road to the pond where there  were two aspects to our work.  Most of us focused on clearing out silt from the bottom of the pond, while one of our number focused on clearing out the ditches feeding water into the pond.

At the end of the morning we carried out a brief exploration of the woods above the pond to see if there are any more watercourses which can be diverted into the pond, and we identified some work which we can do in our next event in November.

One of our intrepid litter pickers – in retro punk style!