About

Last winter the lower end of the Meadow Path, leading from the Hanley car park to the CREOS meadow, was continually flooded. This led to an enormous amount of trampling through the undergrowth to avoid the mud.

We would like to create a mud-free route over the worst of this area, thus keeping your boots drier and the environment safer. It won't be as extensive as the boardwalk in this photo but this does give you an idea of how bad our flooding might get.

We need to raise around £2,000 before we can go ahead.

The overall plan for our footpaths is to turn the Lower Path into a hoggin one, from the Hanley car park as far as the existing wooden boardwalk. This hoggin will also go a few metres up the start of the Meadow Path (This is the path from Hanley to the meadow, not across the meadow itself) as far as the really boggy bit where drainage ditches currently have standing water. At this point, a curved raised boardwalk will continue as far as the three steps that take us up to a drier area.

UPDATE 08/11/21

We met with an installer today to get an estimate for using a recycled plastic composite instead of the wooden railway sleepers we used last time. This will be discussed in the upcoming committee meeting on 22 November. When we get this estimate and a decision on whether to go ahead we will be able to provide a more detailed spec.

UPDATE 06/12/21

After getting costings from manufacturers and installers we have decided against using a recycled plastic composite as this would have cost many thousands. In view of these costs, we decided that it would be best to try and upgrade that area of the path without using the boardwalk idea, integrating it into the pathwork that is already underway, but raising the level and using some of the ideas that the professional installers came up with when they came to give us a quote. They suggested using soakaways instead of drainage ditches, so one of our valiant volunteers spent just £113 on resources, re-used some items we already had on-site and has done a superb job of creating soakaways that will continue to store any excess rainfall but are hidden from view. We have spent £1,100 for aggregate and £1,261 for hoggin.

UPDATE 10/12/21

The hoggin was delivered yesterday and thanks to a team of volunteers we have shifted half the hoggin onto the formed paths. We will continue working every day until it is finished and are hoping to have the path completely finished on Tuesday! Thanks to all for your help!

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