John's Blog

When I began volunteering here in 2010, there seemed to be a never ending list of routine jobs that needed doing; as we, a small group of regular volunteers, became more familiar with the 1400 acres of woodland, we began to recognise just how neglected the parkland had become. Whilst working we could see so many areas that could be improved upon and the frustration was always that we could only do what the annual budget would allow. In fact in the early days of my volunteering we didn’t really have many tool with which to do the jobs that needed doing.

Replacing the old waymark posts included fitting newly designed signs.

It was quite a regular occurrence for visitors to get lost somewhere on the estate, the small map that was available from the visitor reception was misleading and the signage was poor. Many of the routes took walkers through poorly maintained gates and over stiles that some found difficult to negotiate.
An early project therefore was to reassess the walks, improve the signage, replace all the stiles with pedestrian gates and replace many of the old five bar gates. All of these tasks were undertaken over a period of about a year.
The walks were re-examined and where necessary re-routed. Sign posts were made from oak processed on the estate and new signs redesigned to replace the dated painted arrows. Pedestrian and five bar gates were procured and newly designed walks leaflets were trialled and given freely to those requesting them at the visitor reception.

Replacing a field gate. A pedestrian gate went next to it for ease of access.

Each week we set off with posts or gates and limited hand tools to improve the accessibility and clarity of our, in some cases, newly designed parkland walks. Feed back from visitors has allowed us to further improve upon our work and in 2015 we designed and created an additional walk; you can read more about this by clicking on  ‘Walking’ on the header of my home page.
The Fishpool Valley has held a fascination for me from the time I started volunteering at croft. I think that when their construction was originally completed, it must have impacted upon both visual and audible senses.

Today it is naturally formed cascades that have replaced contrived cascades of the past.

You can still gain some impression of what it must have been like if you walk through in the winter when the pools are full. If you walk across the bridges you can see the water rushing through the runoff and over what were once cleverly designed cascades.

Oak from the estate is used to build new footpath bridges.

Currently the runoffs and cascades have fallen into disrepair but the foot bridges too were in a pretty poor state until we undertook to replace the old and very slippery crossing points with structures that are more substantial and safer to walk on.

Wherever there is a runoff, there is a crossing point for walkers.

Each pool is linked by a runoff that forms a stream before entering the next pool