Hurrah For Us: Fame at Last & Tackeroo Improvements (Trailbuilding - Sunday 9th October)

The day got off to a fairly normal start, with appropriate milling about the tea urn and loading the trailer with tools, wood and two tons of surfacing (by hand!) and then hi ho, hi ho, off to work we go ... etc. We didn't have far to go, just across the road to the end of Tackeroo. Work started with barrowing the two tons of surfacing up the trail to help in the formation of the improved final hairpin berms, which will be considerably stronger and a bit higher. It didn't take long to shift the trailer load so then we split into 3 parties. The main group Dave, James, Matt, & Graham dug out the dips between the Rollers and moved the spoil to build up the berms. While they were at it they dug out some sumps to improve drainage and struck a mother lode of material which also made its way into the berms. A huge round of applause for newcomer Graham who performed like a human JCB, barely stopping for breath all day and put us to shame. Terrific effort! Meanwhile Bruce, Phil and Frank had found some spoil across the fire road and were quarrying and barrowing it to the berm. As may be apparent, a berm takes a lot of building

Upstream, (another) Dave, Andrew and Steve had started remodeling the trail below the two wood steps. They timbered up the outside ready for some surfacing after burying a drainage pipe to prevent the corner from flooding. The steps will be remodeled with rock slab landing zones to prevent future erosion. There's still a fair amount of work to get through, not least the slabbing of the Roller dips which will be fairly time consuming

Oh, and the “Fame At Last”? Well, Chase Trails have won the Forestry Commission 'Volunteer of the Year Award'. It recognises how much consistent quality effort, month-in month-out goes into making and mending the trails. And despite our seemingly low key response to it, we really are very, VERY pleased and proud. Hurrah for us!

Phil