irony me this shirt, please

 I am always the one telling people to take before/after pictures of the work we do.....

And I am always the one who comes home with no pictures from the day, at all!

We worked in such a nice spot today, beneath the hanging boulders of millstone grit that perch on top of the hill at Buckstones.

Down, toward March Haigh Reservoir..... down the "desire path" or "trod" as they are most commonly referred to......  it doesn't appear on any maps, but when you park in the car park at Buckstones and look down at the water, it seems to make sense to want to walk down to it......

Thus a "trod" is created......

Unfortunately, in this instance, the trod runs through one of the only recovering bits of "bog" amidst all the bloody tussocks of Molinia grass.  There's sphagnum aplenty in this little gully and many feet tramping over it and through the muddy gully, causing much erosion, and damage to the white trainers of unsuspecting "hikers" who thought this was a good idea, looking down from the car park above.

So.....

Without any fanfares or trumpeting, we surreptitiously "guided" the path away from the sphagnum, out of the rushes, away from the gully, and sort of round to the side, through the Molinia, and joining back up at the bottom, in order to encourage all those white trainers to take the higher ground..... morally, and physically.

Because it isn't an actual path already, we aren't allowed to make a path to replace this not-path..... so we just sort of persuaded the moorland to look more approachable in one direction than the other......

Smoke and mirrors, mate.

Then, the long haul, back up the hill to the car park with all the tools, and a car tyre that we managed to liberate from the moorland below.

An honest day's toil, 'neath crystal blue skies, with a chill breeze......

And we left one of the tools behind... a mattock, in fact..... but nobody was going to venture back down to get it - that's a job for another day......

No pictures again, so here's a screen grab of where i am on about.....

picture stolen AGAIN - so sorry about this!!