From Stream to Ditch

The track from Shorts Lane to Piper House is fairly level for much of its course then becomes more and more steep until towards the summit it gets rough and stony and probably has always been unsuitable to be designated a bridleway. Since SWT took over managing the site the incompetence of the so-called repairs has had to be seen to be believed. Before then all the lower more level stretches were in excellent condition without problems. But SWT needed to justify their receiving a huge grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund so they looked for an easy bridleway project. So, quite unnecessarily they had the whole of the lower stretch surfaced with rough house brick foundation and finer dust on top. Cross pieces were put on (made of concrete kerb stones!). When the man from HLF came to see how their (our) money had been spent he was shown this smart new track, but of course he had never seen the track before which actually looked much better! With all the disruption of the contracting it was some 18 months before the place recovered and looked again a bit more natural. The astonishing thing about this is that there were, and still are, bridleways all across the Blacka Moor site in nowhere near as good condition as this stretch was before they started. Presumably the HLF man was not shown these. Or more likely he guessed the way things were and kept mum for fear his lack of judgement in giving the go ahead would be exposed.

Last year heavy rain raced down the hill and gouged deep ruts in the new surfaces exposing the brick rubble. After complaints SWT decided to do something about it, not having learned the lesson to leave well alone. In fact the gouged gullies had slowly got somewhat better with infilling levelling the grooves out.

Somehow SWT persuaded somebody to cough up some money for some repairs and money like this is the lifeblood of their organisation. It matters not whether what they do is worth doing, but it does matter that they can get some money to do something that keeps their organisation going. So this last week, flush with funds, they have been gleefully wrecking the appeal of this pleasant track using heavy machinery to dig deep ugly ditches where there was previously a natural and attractive stream. The whole process of uglification and incompetence is enough to make one weep. And if anyone can tell me why the way the funding works should not be described as fraudulent I would be glad to hear from them.