Keeping You Posted
The Postmen & Postwomen of the Parkland.
Over the past few years as a group of volunteers, we have been renewing and replacing way-marker posts and signs in order to make the walks in the parkland easier to follow. In fact we have been doing this so frequently we have become very competent postmen & postwomen
These are the Posts!
These are the Men & Women!
Initially we started out just replacing the old marker posts –
It soon became apparent, due to visitors often getting lost, that we needed to improve both the signage and some of the routes. So! Out came the recently installed replacements and these and additional posts were repositioned and put back in along with a range of new signs.
In the open pasture we discovered that the cattle took quite a liking to our new posts, they used them as scratching posts and began knocking them over. So! Out came the posts once more and in they went again, only much deeper.
It was then decided we should have an orienteering course in the parkland. This was to be a permanent course with markers located throughout the parkland; what can we put the markers on? More posts of course, about 30 of them.
To our dismay we discovered that other creatures were having fun with our post. We found posts pulled up and thrown into the brambles, thrown into the fish-pools in the Fishpool Valley, in the early days three disappeared completely in a very short time; as the posts are made of solid oak we though someone was collecting them to make table legs.
We have of course created new walks and these too require many more way-marker posts and more recently we have been putting up some laser etched signs on gates and yes, some of these needed posts.
It isn’t always about putting posts in, over the years we have removed old fences along with the barbed and fencing wire. It can be just as much effort taking them out as it is putting them in.
Most recently there has been an alteration to our Ancient Tree Walk and this also required the repositioning of all the posts, more significantly we have opened up the triple avenue of sweet chestnuts that was fenced off to keep the visitors out; the re-designed route means you can now take a walk through the triple avenue of Ancient Sweet Chestnuts because we have removed all the fencing and the posts that supported it. That task in itself took a couple of days.
The other day part of the fences on the entrance drive needed repairing, in went another five posts.
What next I wonder?
I’ll keep you posted.
