Bridges

[Dexter's Shed]

rich, did you get a bridge built? and if so, do you have pictures of how you built it? I too have a seasonal gully, which at the moment I simply drive through with the landy, but come the winter months when its full, I reckon it'll churn up the clay too much and turn into a quagmire, one idea was to lay a large diameter pipe in and cover with dirt, but some sort of log bridge sounds better to me

http://youtu.be/PEjwUrj_KpM

this was filmed around feb this year, you can just see the gully at bottom of video,

[Rich]

I did a couple of bridges, one for vehicles out of round wood

and a way more sophisticated affair from some milled wood.

I just took down some reasonably straight bits of chestnut about 10inches in diameter close to the Ghyll rolled them over and milled some 3 inch planks to go on top.

It's a bit springy but seems to work okay!

Rich

[Dexter's Shed]

ours turned out easier than I expected, a woodland neighbour source us some pipework and offered us the use of a digger he had hired for a week, then like all best plans, at the very last minute before we left for the woods, a family emergency cropped up and we texted to say we couldn't make it to the woods that day, our kind neighbour therefore did the work for us, we popped over today and added the logs either side, we are going back tomorrow afternoon, again to use the digger to clear out the drain off ditch to the right, which runs into a bigger seasonal stream

[Dexter's Shed]

at the entrance to Goose Wood we have a seasonal stream/ water run off, which come the autumn/winter months becomes very wet although not deep,

when we first started working at the woods, we would simply leave the car on the main ride which passes outside and step across the ditch, but once we started seeing other plot holders, we realised we were causing congestion, so a bridge of some description was needed, to get the car into our wood.

lots of ideas passed through my head, about how we would support the weight of the 4x4 over a pipe bridge, I probably over complicated the idea, as it all worked out so easy, a woodland neighbour who we have become good friends with, texted to say he had sourced us a piece of pipe, 14" diameter x 7ft long capable of taking a 5 tonna weight, and that he had hired a mini digger for a week to clear his pond out with, we could lend it on a saturday, but when saturday came, a family emergency kept us from our planned trip to the woods, after texting our friend the news, he offered to do it for us, just shows what a great bunch owners are.

http://youtu.be/BfofYacdrMo

we then popped over on the sunday and finished it off a little more by adding some ash logs to either side,




after speaking to joe, we arranged to meet at the woods on the monday, and use the digger to clear out the ditch a little to help the water drain into the main stream, plus we could use the scraped earth to bank on top of the bridge more, making it flatter when driving across

http://youtu.be/SPVlZPk8iiI


we will lay some grass matting over the bridge and scatter some grass seed down, hopefully in a year, it'll look like its been there forever