Girls to the rescue! A Tesco trolley was just one of the many items recovered or litter collected on our Action Day.
Just look at all this rubbish in the pictures below – there was so much unsightly litter around the Heath, including Beech Bottom Dyke (close to Beech Road), but we had a really nice sunny day to get to work on it.
Beech Botton Dyke
Beech Botton Dyke
Beech Botton Dyke
Heath Farm Lane
Repairing paths
Townsend Drive
Move through the photos by clicking right or left keys on your keyboard or on the pictures with mouse/trackpad.
There is much more to be done on the muddy paths, but it’s hard work by hand. See where FoBH has funded improvement work.
Mud glorious mud – if you’ve walked the paths on the Heath recently you’ll be well aware of this kind of sight where paths become a glutinous, slippery mess.
Having recently organised and part funded a new path extension to the Ancient Briton, FoBH has now brought in the same contractor to improve access to the west of Harpenden Road. The aerial view below shows where work has been done, especially between Edmund Beaufort Drive and Spinney Lane. Hopefully, this will make the latter an all-weather path, rather than the mire it was recently. The full extent of paths in this area is not shown.
Unbroken white lines show where paths have been resurfaced.Paths were excavated to a depth of about 10 cm and filled with crushed road scalpings,The entrance to the longer path from Harpenden Road. More work is needed on this section
On this occasion budget restrictions have not allowed St Albans District Council to support us financially even though it was agreed that the need to improve this well used amenity was very great. Therefore, following a resolution at our recent AGM, FoBH has met 100% of the cost from members’ subscriptions.
If you have walked along Heathlands Drive recently, you will probably have noticed clearance work near the Judo Club building. Following on from work on the Lower Field, ground checks are being made on this area and the possibilility of having to divert the road.
Ground clearance at the end of the Judo Club building
Chris Parkes FRICS, director of Lambert Smith Hampton, informs us that:
‘Survey work is required to check out some gravitational anomalies that have been found in the vicinity of the entrance to Heathlands School.
Microgravity investigation in the road at the front of the Pioneer Club
There are 2 elements to the work:
1. Thursday 11 February and Monday 15 February- clearance and microgravity survey of an alternative route to the school behind the Judo Club (to allow for the unlikely event that the other survey work causes concern over ground stability of the existing access road). The clearance work is being carried out with a JCB, so there will be some noise.
2. Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 February drilling in the access road outside the school gates to check on subsoil conditions. Depending on what that reveals, further intrusive survey works may be required.
The current intention is that the access road will be narrowed whilst the works are carried out, but will ‘remain in use’.
Friends of Bernards Heath met with representatives of St Albans District Council and councillors Roma Mills and Richard Curthoys to review the current condition of the Lower Field. The new road across the field from the old fire station works well, but many objects have been left, seemingly at random, which make the area look untidy and in some areas, dangerous. It is hoped that contractors will be able to tidy up in the near future.
The first snowfall of 2016 appeared on the 17th January and these wintry scenes were the result. By the 18th it had all disappeared. Here are some examples:
In order, these photos were taken from Spinney Lane, Harpenden Road and the Upper field.
If you are unable to take a walk around the Heath using the excellent short or long guides produced by Peter Burley, you might like to follow the walk in pictures, mostly taken on a balmy autumn day in 2015. The walk took about 1½ hours.
We suggest you read at least the short guide before taking a look at the pictures. They deviate from the guide slightly to take in Townsend Drive, formerly Luton Lane.
The start and end point described in the guides is the Ancient Briton junction.
The wooded area of Bernards Heath includes an extensive network of well used paths. As many will know, several of these paths are now very muddy and slippery. They seem to be particularly bad this year, perhaps because rain has fallen with almost daily regularity in December and early January. The paths then have little chance to dry out.
Friends of Bernards Heath has been improving the paths over several years, the cost being shared with St Albans District Council. The longest, a new path extension to the Ancient Briton.
The paths have been dug to a depth of about 4 inches/10 cm and refilled with crushed road scalpings or planings. The resulting surface is much firmer than the muddy areas and drains more easily.
The sections may not always be apparent because of debris falling onto the path, but the image below shows clearly where the path surface is much improved beyond the lower muddy area.
We hope that the Council will continue to support us in our efforts to make the Heath a more enjoyable place to walk.
Does the rainbow over the Lower Field herald a change in the very mild weather we’ve had of late? Well, the temperature today (7 January) dropped to a maximum of 9°C, by contrast with the run of mild and dull weather over November and December (average 12°C). Our rainfall totals over these months were unexceptional compared with the north of England and Scotland.
To supplement the survey work that Hertfordshire County Council has carried out on the land it owns at Bernards Heath, St Albans City and District Council has similar survey works underway on adjacent common land that it manages.
To supplement the survey work that Hertfordshire County Council has carried out on the land it owns at Bernards Heath, St Albans City and District Council has similar survey works underway on adjacent common land that it manages. While this work is underway, the playground will be closed from Monday 21 December for a short period. The Council will open the playground again as soon as possible.
Richard Shwe Head of Community Services, St. Albans City & District Council
Still digging – efforts continue to ease access for residents of Fontmell and Bridle Close. Mud has been a real problem and now a third almost diagonal track is being developed across the Lower Field, this time with a more substantial base of sand and gravel, similar to that used on the Green Ring. It will be accessed through the old Fire Station Grounds.
