Friday 17th September
Another 20 tonnes of crushed limestone was delivered at 3pm. I then had a few hours spare before the weekly evening ride round the trail (see events page for details of next ride). I decided to make further progress on my litter sweep. I filled 5 sacks in about 2 hours. Most of this was nothing to do with the cycle trails – it’s just rubbish that’s been left to fester in the woods for years by the look of it.
Saturday 18th September
Our target for the weekend was to surface a length of existing trail (area 3 in the map below). This isn’t the most exciting part of the trail, but making it weather proof before winter sets in was a priority.
See trail plans August 2010 for more information on what we’re doing.
We’d hired a power barrow and plate compactor from Brandon hire in Swindon. As supporters of the trail they offer us a very good rate. By 10am Chris had collected these are we were ready to go. Before starting on the main job we filled in and reshaped a corner coming up the hill from the Red woodwork section near the start. This corner had been gradually shifting from the original layout, so we dug up the unused bit and build a bit of a berm.
Then we moved several loads of rocks to our target area. Chris had an urgent work call-out, so it was just myself (Tom) on site for a while. Then I ran out of petrol. Luckily Pete and Phil turned up not long after. The three of us spent the afternoon moving Limestone into position. When Chris returned we’d decided to build 3 humps on an otherwise boring straight, so we shifted a few barrow loads of mud to do this with. We also buried a few rocks here and there to make the section more interesting.
Our anonymous wood worker spent a few hours routing out grooves on the woodwork section near the trail start.
Sunday 19th September
It was like the old days in the morning – just Phil and myself working on the trail. As the day progressed we were joined by ever more people though and this was unlike the old days. First it was Ben, James and David at around 11am. Then it was Jenny, Lee and then Gary. Between us we filled in all of section 3. We found a way of increasing the barrow capacity – we compacted the material as it was loaded. This gave us about 20% more material per load, so we were covering about 5m of trail per journey.
Our anonymous wood worker spent another afternoon routing out grooves in the woodwork.
As darkness drew in we’d surfaced all of our target, plus a 20m length near the start of the section and the berm before that.
Thanks to all those who turned up, it was great to have so much support.
I didn’t take many photos, but I got a lot of video that will be used for a future trail update. See Croft Trail videos.
- Pointless Stats
- Length surfaced: 225m
- Barrow journeys: approx 50
- Barrow trip distance: 700m
- Barrow travel distance: 35km!
- Payload per journey: approx 250kg
- Mass of Limestone moved: approx 12 tonnes
- Finished trail per load: 4.5m
- Hours: 18
- People: 10
- People hours: 73
- Metres per hour: 12.5
- Metres per person hour: 3
- Tonnes per hour: 0.6
- Cakes: 23
(that’s enough, ed)
Progress map.
Reshaped corner
Surfacing
Old trail growing over (right) with new trail (left). This is the start of the previous new section.
Routed woodwork
Sunday afternoon
