PLEASE NOTE: the date for our next work session with Yorkshire Water is now Thursday, March 13th. Please see details at the end of this post.
Friends of the Loxley Valley volunteers are helping Yorkshire Water to clear a badly overgrown footpath at Damflask.
Gorse, brambles and young self-set trees have been pushing their way across the permissive path at Rickett Bank.
The path threads its way along the banks of the beautiful Ughill Brook where it flows into the south west tip of Damflask reservoir at the bottom of Oaks Lane.
But the rampant vegetation was making it hard to walk along without stumbling on trip hazards and blockages.
So Friends of the Loxley Valley have helped Yorkshire Water’s rangers to hack back the jungle and make the path easier to access.
Why did Friends of the Loxley Valley decide to help?
We stepped in after our committee member Nick Blaney alerted the ranger team to the poor state of the path.
“It’s a beautiful little valley, and the Yorkshire Water path connects to public rights of way that go deeper along it,” said Nick.
“It seemed such a shame that it was getting so hard to walk along.
“I asked Yorkshire Water if they could do anything about it, and I also said we could chip in a bit of elbow grease if needed.”
Yorkshire Water own the land on both sides of the path. It’s an ancient woodland site, but until recently it was becoming dominated by conifers that had been planted for their timber.
They’ve now mostly been felled and replaced by young native hardwood trees, in an effort by Yorkshire Water to produce a more diverse ecosystem.
They say they’d welcome community involvement as they try to draw up a management plan to look after the woods and the path that runs through them.
We’ve pencilled in another footpath maintenance session as a first step towards this. It’ll take place at 10am on Monday 10th March , when we hope to do more work to improve the path. All welcome. (N.B. this date has now changed to Thursday 13th March – please message Nick Blaney on Facebook if you’d like to come along).
Before and after. Here’s a badly overgrown stretch of the path, where prickly gorse bushes were blocking the way…
…and here’s that overgrown section of path after a spruce-up from the volunteers.
