hit it

go up on the moors, and hit them with a hammer.

I've told you about ~"reprofiling" before haven't i?

ok brief summary......

Water all over t'shop.  Peat, water, cotton grass, moss, heather..... all over t'wicket, as they say in Yorkshire. 

Water needs to run off.... and to an extent there are big efforts into slowing the flow of that water so it's gradual release causes less stress down the water courses.

Sometimes water drips off stuff and starts to erode the peat.... it's catch 22!  Instead of a nice gentle slope to the water channels, across the moorland, you end up with eroded peat and an undercut banking that can "calve" much like a chunk of ice might fall from a glacier, or ice sheet, sending lichen, moss, and peat, tumbling into the gully.  The gully gradually gets wider and wider, and in some cases, whole patches slide down the hillside.

So...... whatcha gonna do?

You get a digger, and you dig out the undercut banking, and compact it back down, and re-lay the vegetation over them so they have a nice, natural, gradual slope of between 33 and 45 degrees.  The water runs down to the gully without further erosion of the valuable peat.

Piece of piss!

What happens when you can't get hold of a digger, or you can't get a digger into the location?  People power, mate!  In fact.... mostly, volunteer people power.

So that's where i've been.... out on Marsden Moor, with a spade, a lump hammer, a tamper, and the ubiquitous mattock.

spent the day hammering, digging, sloshing, swirling, and stomping the moorland back into what can only be described as ..... better than it was!

The sod  cut, lifted.

Land scraped, scratched, pounded, reshaped.

Moss carpet re-laid.

and that's a National Trust haiku......  you're welcome.

I am gonna say this is an RAF Airbus A400M Atlas...... but what would i know?  Put me right?