This post has no title...just words and piccys.

Today, Friday 8th April, the Trust tenant farmer at Causeway Farm brought three ewes with their day old lambs to the parkland at St. Catherine's.

A well earned rest after a bout of heavy drinking!

 St. Catherine's is very popular with dog walkers so,with the arrival of the livestock, these signs were immediately put up by Trust rangers at access points into the parkland. 

 

With livestock back in the parkland, a priority job was to clear the gravel (that had been washed down in the Winter floods) out of the cattle-grid.

Livestock might have learnt how to negotiate this cattle-grid, as it was full to the brim with gravel over a large area, and wander out onto the road. Normally this cattle-grid is lifted out for cleaning purposes but the gravel had completely covered the fixing bolts...

....so the Spring Clean had to be done the hard way.

Trowels were used to scoop out the gravel between the bars...

...after loosening the impacted gravel with a bar (colour coordinated of course)...

...and or a mattock.

The gravel was used to resurface a boggy section of the nearby footpath.
Recycling at its best!

The gravel was dumped...

...and 'raked'....

...to give a much better surface to this popular footpath.

Work in progress.

After well over two hours of hard work, and a fair amount of empathy from passers-by,* the job is done!
*The following are some of their comments... "Rather you than me"..." Don't envy you that job"..."You'll be ready for the weekend after clearing that lot away"..."Do you always get the best jobs?"...BUT OF COURSE!

(The ramp at the top right hand corner of the cattle-grid is just visible in this image. It is designed to allow hedgehogs and other wildlife to escape from the depths of the grid should they tumble in).

The daffodils in the parkland...a particularly fine display this Spring.