The main area of English bluebells is starting to look really attractive after all our efforts over the years.  The photo shows what part of it looked like after another hour of selectively removing velcro plant, ground elder, nettles and some docks and buttercups on Sunday morning on the 28th April.  Stll more to do though.

We were joined by lots of butterflies while working on the English bluebell area on Thursday 18th April, as well as our favourite robin.  Adam was quick enough to catch a Speckled wood on camera.

More mowing and strimming in the morning on Sunday 14th (by James and Malcolm) alongside the Nelsons Lane fence.  Holly and Louise joined them in the afternoon to help with preparation of a seed bed for poppies.  You can see more on our Facebook page.

On April 11th Mike, Adam and Malcolm mowed the verges beside the main path and the grass path behind Hobmoor Terrace.  Later they cleared a patch at the rear of the native English Bluebell area and planted some native foxgloves.

We took a break from the path restoration on 31st March to help a resident in Hobmoor Terrace who needed space to install a new garden fence.  The brambles/rambling rose and nettles there were a bit of a problem that needed to be sorted anyway!

Working on the final path section on the west side on March 28th proved to be a real challenge for Lesley, Malcolm and Adam.  Many, many roots above and below the barrier beside the path here were starting to grow right out across the path, posing a possible future trip risk if not removed.  It was a real axe and pic job, and thus quite slow.

We were out again on 25th and 27th March (2019).  On Wednesday 27th Tim and Malcolm finally managed to complete restoration of the eastern side of the path.  Having scraped off mud and grass they added 4 more bags of pea gravel.  It was pleasing to get so many favourable comments from passing path users about how much safer the path was when cyclists went past and how much better the drainage was too.  We still hope to finish by the end of March.

Three great sessions this week.  Lesley, Adam, Mike, Tim, James and Malcolm scraped encroaching soil and grass off of 2 long sections of the main path and added fresh gravel to the edges.  First photo below (from Pam Brown) shows how near we are to finishing by the end of March.  On 24th Match James, Ethan and Louise helped cut up a large pile of shrubby vegetation that had been cut down because it had caused partial collapse of a garden side fence.  It was added to the compost heap (second photo from Pam).

The weather has not been too bad so far so we have been making really good progress with restoring the path back to its original width of 2 m.  Photos show how far we have got by 13th March.

In spite of much heavy rain the treated area down to Nelsons Lane was puddle free.

The MCT field-work co-ordinator (Malcolm) is very grateful to the volunteers who made this possible (Lesley & Paul, Adam, James, Ethan, Mike, Louise and Holly) and to the Dringhouses & Woodthorpe Ward Committee for funding the first 100 bags of gravel.  Photo below shows some of the team in action.

Generally grass and soil encroachment had made the path 5 feet narrower than it originally was. 20 years ago.