The Hole in the Bank

You may remember that in the last work party blog (Some Odd Jobs); I said that - 

 'The last job of the day was to investigate some erosion of the stream bed near the tool store. We will fix it when the stream has dried up.' 

Well, by the time the work party was held on Wednesday this week the stream had stopped running so we began the repair.

This was the hole we needed to deal with. It was partly caused by erosion from the water swirling around in the pool below the pipe carrying the stream under the path but a lot of 'hole' was the result of our canine visitors using it to get into the water.

Our plan was to stack some logs at the front of the hole, like the one in the photo above, fix them place with stakes, then backfill the hole with stone and earth.

The first job was to collect the stones. There were a reasonable number of them by the hedge near the bottom of the pylon field and these were collected and brought to the hole.

The first stakes being driven into the ground by Pete and Joe.

With the stakes firmly in place thinner logs were laid behind them then Pete and Jim began filling the hole with the stones we collected.

More logs went on top of the stones and another stake put in.

We weaved some thinner poles around the stakes to hold everything together and filled the remainder of the hole with earth and grass. The larger stones collected were placed to support the stakes, and a big one put under the pipe outlet to reduce the force of the water hitting the stream bed. Hopefully that will reduce the erosion a bit as well.

Another good job done by these hard working volunteers.