Some of the Tidy Towns Works

As many of you may know, TCBC was lucky enough to be awarded a Tidy Towns grant to improve Henllys Local Nature Reserve. We've drawn up a map detailing some of the larger activities from the grant that may be more obvious. Many of these are to increase access to the wider community, but more importantly have opened up much more of the LNR which has been inaccessible for many years. The most impressive is the Villager's orchard in the south eastern section of the LNR with a new easy access from Henllys Way and along a stone path (which should green over and just provide a nicer walking surface) and across a newly constructed bridge, gate and mobility access gate.


View Titdy Towns Improvements in a larger map

The whole southern section was very difficult to get through and was becoming a HImalayan balsam reserve due to protection from brambles. Following up behind the contractors tractor was TCBC's ranger, vols and ourselves clearing areas which were not accessible by tractor.

The Villagers' Orchard and other Tidy Towns treats

We've done some good work over the past year with Henllys Church in Wales School, Coed Eva Primary School and the 1st Henllys Scouts. We continued our work with local young people recently by planting up the Villager's Orchard. This was all part of the Welsh Government Tidy Towns funded grant which TCBC successfully applied for to support the voluntary conservation and educational work we have done here since 2008.

26 pupils and 4 adults from Henllys Church in Wales Primary School, 1 Henllys Community Councillor, and two local County Councillors,Torfaen Council Countryside Section and 2 volunteers, joined with 3 volunteers from Friends of Henllys LNR to plant the 30 trees.

The eventual fruit will be for the community, but the wide variety of flowers will provide a boost for pollinator species especially bees. Fruiting trees include, apple, plum, pear, cherries and damsons.

 The trees were pre-dug by a mini-digger to make it easier for us, but this turned out to make things more difficult as they had filled with water and were enormous, so we had to bail them out and then fill them back in. The children turned up, we gave them our Keep Wales Tidy funded gloves and after a quick demonstration they got stuck in. They had to backfill the hole, add compost and the magic powder, then fill up the hole to the level of the scion. Finally they added a coir tree mulch to give the trees the best chance of success. Great fun and muddiness was had by all.

Planting the Villagers' Orchard

Afterwards, tree guards were added and in the 2 following weeks, stakes were added with much appreciated guidance from TCBC Countryside Volunteer Mr. Adkins. 

Soggy roots, advice from Mr Adkins and getting the trees railed off.

Finally, some of the rails were pyrographed (another Tidy Towns-funded too that we requested) helping us to keep a better record of the planting plan. Later on we will get Year 6 to add their names to the rails and perhaps a sentence about why the trees are good for us and wildlife.

Pyrograph engraving the rails around the trees. Note the new path to help walking through the orchard (this will grow over in time)

Chris Partridge from Friends of Henllys LNR said "We were grateful to be a part of this large Tidy Towns funded project and today we have shown that with a bit of help we can make a great difference in our community with this great community event. Hopefully there'll be some fruit left for me, and in many years to come some of the children who took part today can tell their grandchildren that they planted this magnificent orchard"

 

Building Bridges

There's been much hoo hah's going on about the removal of the bridge from the LNR and its relocation by 5m away. Here's a statement from the Rights of Way Officer

"The Council recently replaced the footbridge that provided access to rear of Birch Grove. It was decided to remove the bridge after an inspection revealed that the handrails on the footbridge had become unsafe. The inspection also revealed that the original footbridge , which had been built without Council consent, in its original position was a potential hazard has it was constructed adjacent to a considerable fall into the concrete channel. The Council decided that it would construct the new bridge upstream from the existing bridge where the fall into the channel would be reduced."

ROW Officer and vols working on the bridge

Finishing touches and group picture (minus Brian) 

So thank you to TCBC and their volunteers (of which two are 87 and 93 years of age) for putting this in at TCBC's cost. Ward and Community Councillors came on site and also agreed to the positioning of the bridge.

The Friends of Henllys LNR recently helped to unbounce the bouncy bridge near to the noticeboards. Part of the problem was that the original bridge was made from very thick non-FSC timber, probably from a rain forest and was rotting in parts. The new FSC-timber was quite a bit thinner and even following improvements left a small trip hazard, which most people didn't even realise. Anyway, in these "have you had an accident which was not your fault?" rife days (going back to the previous bridge), Brian [TCBC Rights of Way] came back and today jacked up the bridge enough to remove these trip hazards (the first few passers by didn't even notice).

Ah, no trip hazard, cheers Brian.

Finally for aesthetics, I disk cut off all the previously exposed nails. This was done before the bridge was jacked up and you can see the 1.5 inch lip.

For the keen eyed reader

Oop Twmbarlwm they are having a Tidy Tump Day

Dear all, our friends up on Twmbarlwm are having a Tidy Tump day on Sat 25th January and welcome all volunteers to come along and join in. Details for this event are below:

You can visit their new website here: www.twmbarlwm.co.uk

Erode is long!

One of the regular volunteers with Friends of Henllys LNR recently mentioned that one of the footpaths off the LNR was in a dreadful state due to prolonged torrential rainfall. Upon a closer inspection the stone footpath had been washed away in places 50cm wide and 35 cm deep.

55 cm wide and 30 cm deep

 

Water flowing along the footpath from 2 stream breaches

The cause of this appeared to be from 2 places where the stream, which is elevated to the footpath, broke its banks in 2 places. Some of this is due to silting up and blockages from fallen branches snagging and building up dams forcing the stream along different paths. We decided to take action on Friday, before it became even worse and just in case it gets repaired and the underlying cause was not investigated or treated.

Water pooling around LNR access gate

We decided that we could build a couple of fascines from brash collected on the Reserve from trees felled as part of the management plan with TCBC and volunteers. The woodsman’s grip mark II worked a treat...

Woodsman's grip II improved with a surplus electrical cable

...and the two bundles were tied up with wire and transported across the muddy reserve by wheelbarrow.

Could do with an ox

They were then put in place after several different orientations to best limit the flow onto the footpath.

Fascines in place note the water still running down the breach

We built on or fascine experiences on the Local Nature Reserve over the last 4 years and knew that these would silt up in time and would stabilise the banks, however, we needed to do a fix now, to stop further erosion. We decided to use some of the silt that had accumulated nearby to the fascines (probably adding to the problems) and backfilled behind and on top/through the fascine nearest to the bank. After a good load of this, the breach did appear to be blocked.

Backfilled with silt, breach appears repaired

A little further downstream and by standing in the stream, the second breach appeared to be caused by blockages in the normal route of the stream including branches and a carpet flytipped from the houses above in Llys Gwyrdd. These were unblocked by hand and 2 defences built up near the breach to try and halt the flow of water onto the footpath.

No more water flowing over breach 2

At the end of the footpath where the pooling was most prominent, we dug two drainage channels back towards the stream, but the flow away didn’t look fantastic considering the channel was over 30cm deep in places.

On the Saturday night, there was another yellow weather warning, more blocked drains and again more water cascading down the roads and into this stream. Sunday heralded a lovely day and we were fearful that these defences would not have held. However, it is nice to be surprised occasionally and the path near to the gate was immediately drier.

Much drier due to drainage channel

Moreover, the eroded channel was much drier with water in just the deepest sections.

(Sun) This was full of water on Friday and with heavy rainfall on Saturday evening drained away really well

Walking upstream, we were pleased to see that both the breaches had successfully held, which was brilliant news for us. A great result for a couple of volunteers.

Out with the Bouncy Bridge

Today I assisted TCBC Woodland Ranger, Jon Howells,  in making good a previous repair to the bridge over the stream near the Principal entrance of the Birch Grove Car Park. Originally the bridge wearing boards were made using mahogany, which is a very tough and stiff wood and now thankfully it use is much more controlled today as it grows in tropical rainforests. So when, the edges started to rot away, they were replaced with 1 inch thick decking boards. These are not quite the same as mahogany and when they were screwed down at the edges and middle, they were very springy....

starting to pull up the boards

so much so, that as people walked over them eventually, the screws were lifted out of the wood, increasing the "bounceupability" (Oxford English Dictionary take note of the word's first proper use) of the planks. So I'd be going backwards and forwards to the bridge putting in new screws. Anyway, the new Welsh Government Tidy Towns funded grant gave us a little bit of money to spend on the bridge to make it sound again.

This old one was thick and a bit rotten in parts so out it went

We then cut the new boards to length and laid them lengthwise and impact driver'd them down.

Over the boardwalk

These were the foundations for the old boards to go back on top in the same orientation as before, first we had to cut them down to fit the width of the bridge.

Cutting and laying the boards down

We put all the boards down, spaced them out and screwed them down again with the impact driver. While we were finishing off 3 LNR users came over the bridge and said how much better it was, so not a bad day's work all in all.

Bouncy bridge bye bye

Before I end this blog update, I'd like to shamelessly plug a colleague of mine Gareth Davies who works for Environment Wales, who recently completed a year doing loads of different activities raising money for Recovery Cymru and Keep Wales Tidy. My personal favourite was him giving up alcohol for a whole year in memory of his Mam. A brave, touching and fantastic achievement. If you have a second there is a 3 and a bit minute video showing some of the stuff he got up to which can be viewed here.

 

If anyone wanted to, Gareth's "Just Giving" link is here too.