Trail build report: Sun 11th Dec, South side of pitch

After finishing off the East side on the previous day we decided to fix the section of trail on the South side of the pitch. This had originally been built in December 2008 and modified in September 2009. It had turned really muddy this year – a combination of the original surfaced line being too narrow and not always in the right place plus some of the materials being inadequate (yellow pea gravel rather than the 70mm down type 1 Limestone that we now use).

Phil and myself were at the trail for 9am and started shifting material. New recruit Richard Rowe turned up at dead on 10am and got busy with the muck truck. Jerome, John Speed and Sarah arrived a short while later. The afernoon shift consisted of Mike Jeffries, Andy Matthews and Nigel Gregson.

Around 130m of muddy trail was dug out and resurfaced, bringing it up to current standards. The 20 tonne pile that had been delivered on Friday was now down to a few wheel barrow’s worth.

Knowing that we couldn’t leave until it was totally dark then we found a bonus job to do. We blocked off the muddy short cut on the climb leading into the resurfaced section. We have a plan for this – a difficult rock step (Tom’s UnReasonably Difficult Steps).

We had been really lucky with the weather over the weekend. A cold december rain started to fall just as we were packing the tools away. Definitely good timing.

We’re really pleased with the trail building progress this year – see the complete list of what we’ve done.