Bags of Help. Erosion, gabions and moving mountains continued

After finishing a great team building day with a team from Welsh Government organised by Keep Wales Tidy, we had a little homework to do on the Friday. It was clear there wouldn't be enough stone left for the next team building day and some of the baskets looked a little bent out of shape from the force of the stones coming out the chute. We refilled some of the baskets and re-wired them internally to give them more strength and hand-filled them as we went along. It was the biggest tower of Hanoi that we had ever played, but the baskets looked much better for this work.

Little bit of remedial work re-wiring the gabion baskets

The Saturday arrived and our shiny new wheel barrows looked like someone had catapulted thousands of little ball bearings at them. We got all the tools ready for the day and waited for the arrival of a group from Barclays Partner Finance, again organised by Keep Wales Tidy as part of our Bags of Help grant.

Work was funded by our Bags of Help Application which is through Tesco single use carrier bag charges (those 5ps add up) and managed by Groundwork

The first volunteer arrived at 9.15 for a 10 am start and this was very promising. The rest arrived on time and in very good spirits. A detailed briefing was held beforehand by Keep Wales Tidy on the project, including health and safety and why the project was being done and how it would be helping Friends of Henllys LNR. We then set to work with 2 new Friends of Henllys LNR volunteers who helped to load of Barclay's barrows from the smaller pile of limestones by the gate.


The route

The Barclays Team set off at a right old pace, but we knew that it would be a big drain after expecting at least 1400 calories would likely be burned off over the day.


Conservation in action

An amazing amount was shifted and much more care was taken over stones being near the baskets and we knew that as long as the backfill was lower than the stone in the baskets we wouldn't have too many issues.

Directing the rubble chute

Barclays backfilling

This also made it much easier for us to have the gabions square meaning the lid could be shut more easily. It was slower work when the gabions were towards the top as we had to keep checking to make sure the lid could be closed as squarely as possible.

Backfilling in places was easier by tipping (wiring a cage in the background)

The lower 4 baskets which were by now full were then wired together to make the structure even stronger. We made 3 extra baskets and put some stone in these on top of the lower 4 baskets.

 

Great job Barclays Partner Finance

On the Sunday, we were left with around 4 tonnes to move and it was key to get it at least down the long chute as we had hired them for just 1 week and at £200 a week we didn't want to spend that extra money. Three of us worked really hard in 5 hours where I burned off just over 2000 calories according to my Fitbit Charge HR. It was really tiring so we knew what an amazing job Welsh Government and Barclays Partner Finance had done.

Hard 5 hours work

Finally on the Monday morning, our new volunteer Richard came out and helped Brian and I for a few hours. Our aim was to tidying up and move the last 4-5 barrows of stone in time for Travis Perkins to collect the scaffold planks and rubble chutes.

Ready to backfill the next 16 tonnes?

 

It was a bit sad to see them go, but what a great achievement moving 16 tonnes of limestone 90 metres including navigating 2 steep slopes with no injuries. We know it could have been done more quickly with heavy machinery, but what extra damage would that have done to the LNR and what new erosion paths would that have created in the wet boggy soil.

 

Loads of people were interested in what we were doing and we had loads of exciting conversations about what we had done and what we were planning. We know we need another 16 tonnes to complete the project, but we have to wait for the grant to be paid to us first. It'll be a bit of breathing space for now until at least July.

 

 

Gabion day Bags of Help

After applying for a Tesco Bags of Help last year getting shortlisted in January, finding out we were awarded a £8,000 grant, we finally got started on the actual work in May.

We've been helped by Keep Wales Tidy who have organised a series of team building exercises to help us deliver these projects. The idea behind team building and not just contractors and machines is that more people can get involved and have a sense of ownership of the work. The erosion we are tackling is purely a result of huge amounts of severe rainfalls that have hit us over the last 5 years especially over the summers. However,  there are several instances where large machinery has caused problems on the very wet LNR. For example, our willow coppicing area is like pea soup in winter where a tractor came in a 5 years ago, we've lost 2 big beech trees as a result of silt being dumped at the base of the trees resulting in decreased aeration of the roots followed by infection and death. Last month we had to make safe a massive beech tree which fell in recent storms leaving a huge branch dangling dangerously over a stream which we were due to undertake a litterpick with the local beaver group. Sadly, the ground was really wet and the hill access by the vehicle with the winch led to two tyre channels which allowed water to run down them and create a bog/pond at the dip in the hill. This was right in the area where we now need to wheelbarrow the stone from the nearest access gate to the erosion point.

The Work

Keep Wales Tidy also designed the methodology and made sure the activities were made safer, largely by suggesting rubble chutes for the steeper areas. The whole plan was approved by the countryside team and the limestone was suggested by TCBC's County Ecologist who said by using limestone, the increased calcium load in the water would provide a more favourable habitat for crayfish. We did a brief survey last year with Henllys CIW School, so we hope we have a positive effect on these in the future. One local resident told us that he used to catch crayfish in this stream some 40 years ago.

Plan of action

As a community group we spent 2 Fridays repairing the tyre damage as best as we could including buying a £50 bag of stone and hiring scaffolding planks to go over the boggy patch. We also installed and tested the rubble chutes the day before.

Left. Tyre damage and pooling of water at the dip. Middle. Sumps and drainage as well as the scaffolding planks and other wood to cross this area. Right. 16 tonnes of Taffs Well limestone.

The next stage was getting the stones from the area by the gate down the slope and then down the slide. This was a lot of really hard work. The stones were tipped down the top slide and collected safely by rubble sacks at the bottom.


The long push

The stones were then emptied from the bag and barrowed a short distance to the bottom slide.

The short push

The gabion team helped to position the rubble chute and put the gabions in the right places. Once filled, stone was backfilled behind the gabion baskets.

Gabion construction

End of day

The team did such an amazing job and achieved so much. It would have taken the group days and days to do this work and it saved us so much money from the grant by having this team come and help out so we are very grateful to them, especially Sadie for organising it from their end. We are grateful for Keep Wales Tidy for suggesting this interactive way of undertaking this work.

On the Friday, I went down from 12 - 7pm to do a little spring clean on the gabion baskets  which resembled a very heavy version of the Tower of Hanoi. This will make it much easier for us for later today where a team from Barclays Partner Finance will be helping out.

Top Left. Where it finished on Wednesday. Top Middle. Moving stone from basket 3 to basket 4. Top Right. Adding the tensioning wire to basket 3. Bottom Left. Adding the second layer of tensioning wire. The baskets were then re-filled sequentially adding in more tensioning wire. Bottom Middle. Side view. Bottom Right. Front view after moving all the stones around.