On Tuesday the eager students from the Moving On group at Perth College returned to St. Magdalene’s Hill to continue upgrading the paths in their local area for the benefit of the community.
The students were very eager to do more work at the site as they found working on the path last week ‘very satisfying’. The group were interested in learning how to do different tasks from last week and understand how to create a path that visitors can enjoy.
The students split into to different groups to tackle the problems they had identified and in these groups discussed how these sections of path could be improved. The first group identifed that a structured path at one of the entrances to the site has become overgrown with moss and was potentially very slippy underfoot. The group decided that it would be appropriate to scrape back all of the material that had gathered on the path to make it nicer to walk on. The group worked hard clearing the debris that had built up on the path and took great care ensuring that they finished the path off well to return it to its original condition.
The second group identified that a large tree had become overgrown and was infringing on the path. They also identified that due to the overgrowth, this had resulted in the sight line becoming obscured and hiding waymarkers and benches. The students understood that it was important that these features should be visible as this helped visitors to navigate the area and allow them to see the areas where they could stop and reat after climbing the steep hill at the site. The group did a wonderful job trimming back the overgrown vegetation in the area and even finished it off by creating an asthetically pleasing crown to the tree.
After lunch, the two groups worked together to address some of the problems with water damage on the path at various sections along the route from the entrance at the car park to the area that had been working on for the last two weeks. The group did a fantastic job of scraping back the muddy material to create a much nicer walk for visitors. The students were complimented by many visitors about how much their work was appreciated. Many visitors stopped to chat with the group as they had seen the effort they had put into creating such a good job and the students were given a lot of positive feedback.
The group finished the day by thanking the Path Skillz team for assisting them but it is the students who deserve all the credit for their hard work, dedication and commitment to finishing the work to such a high standard. The Path Skillz team would like to thank the group for all their hard work over the course of the programme and for providing a few chuckles along the way ( the ‘hoe’ joke always raises a smile) 🙂
Below is a blog completed by Mollie’s Muckers:
‘Today we cleared the paths and we also cut back the vegetation to make the paths bigger and allow people to see the features in the area such as waymarkers and benches to rest on.
The group all agree with John that it is ‘very satisfying’ to be involved in a project like this.
We used a lot of the tools today but mainly the ‘ho’ to scrape back all of the moss to give the path a nice finish. We also used the spade to cut along the wooden barrier that separates the path from the grass verge so that people could see where the path edges were and it gave it a nice finish’
Mollies Muckers – All of the fantastic students who attended 🙂
Path Skillz 