Paths and Resources

This part of Blacka has a lot going for it:

At the woodland edge, it has some of the best birdsong during the season. Views to the south are extensive and include some wooded hillsides - a great bonus in a district where upland slopes are so often blighted by tree clearing and grazing. Here winter colouring is provided by bronzed bracken enhanced by spectacular sunrises. And from the public footpath there have often been excellent sightings of wildlife including mammals.

So the question might be asked why does this path get so little attention? Always at this time of year it becomes a 'no-go' area. Some judicious  scything of the bracken would be more than a friendly gesture to walkers and in my view, if done sensitively, would do little harm to the sense of naturalness.  It would actually make it accessible. Many of the public footpaths on Blacka now look somewhat like this.

After only the lightest drizzle or dew many visitors are understandably reluctant to venture through wet overhanging fronds that can reach as high as 7 feet. But these paths get no help. I wonder where the access organisations are when they're needed. One's not asking for a lot. Just some minor clearance of less than a metre - with a scythe. Money is found for poisoning and tractor driven clearance of large areas where people do not walk. Bridleways get aggressive strimming, endangering some of the more attractive plant life also costing public money.

I see no reason why, at this time of year, there should not be a programme of careful scything along the rights of way. This would be a far better use of resources than the expensive mechanised attack on stands of bracken. Machine driven management is usually a disaster anyway. All tasks with supposed labour saving devices such as chain saws, powerful strimmers and chemical applicators go too far, as if the machinery itself develops a life of its own.

If you raise this you are likely be told that there are not the 'resources'. Yet some £20,000 can be found this year for barbed wire and walling for the benefit of sheep grazing that is undeniably damaging to the environment in many ways.