Major works open up new ‘Routes’ for woodland

Before and after imagery of river works.
Image L: Rob Bowen | Image R: Jude Hetherington

Wildlife and local community benefit from woodland and river works.

West Cumbria Rivers Trust have reached a key milestone on the ‘A Wilder Walkmill’ project with the completion of major works to improve the site this summer. The project is an ambitious £2.3M effort to benefit wildlife and the local community at Moresby Parks near Whitehaven, where the Walkmill Community Woodland site is located. Works included conservation efforts to encourage a more naturally flowing river as well as improvements to site infrastructure to make the woodland more accessible for the local community.

The footpaths were in a mixed state with some well-used but others inaccessible as they were unsurfaced and boggy. 1km of previously unsurfaced, largely unused, footpath has been surfaced and 700m of existing footpaths have been re-surfaced, opening up new routes to regular users to explore. Three new bridges have also been constructed to improve access to the restored footpaths and move across boggy areas more easily.

Seven new ponds have been created at the site. The ponds have lots of practical uses as well as being beneficial to the woodland and wildlife. They help capture water from the drainage of the new paths and one pond will act as a natural flood management feature with the capacity to hold higher levels of water during high rainfall; there are also plans to build a pond dipping platform in the future. The ponds have created lovely areas of wetland and wet woodland encouraging lots of wildlife including birds and dragonflies to new areas of the woodland.

River restoration improvements included removing the concrete beds and banks from 280metres of the river channel. Nothing went to waste and the concrete was then crushed and used as a foundation for the new footpaths. The river channel flows more naturally with imported gravels creating riffles and bars creating better habitat for a diverse spectrum of species that live in and alongside the river. The land next to the river will be planted with wildflowers and will have a new unofficial footpath.

The woodland was previously very dense with trees of a similar age, conservation measures therefore aimed to thin out the trees allowing more light and growth of wildflowers and younger trees. The digging works provided a great opportunity to open up these woodland glade areas and also provide a location to deposit spoil from the digging of the new ponds. These areas will be planted with wildflowers and tree saplings to become pockets of diverse ecosystems within the woodland.

Original designs from geomorphologists Dynamic Rivers were to create a new section of river with a cascade section, diverting the channel from the heavily modified man-made concrete structure perched high above the natural valley where the river should be, however the regulators deemed the contaminated land risk to be too high in this area to approve these works. The recent three unprecedented flood events in August (which have caused some damage to one or two of the paths) has highlighted the need to ensure we deliver this element of the original plan, which will help resolve damage to the footpaths from any future flooding.

The works have been made possible by the general funding of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Sellafield’s Social Six Multiplied and the Environment Agency.

The Walkmill team would like to particularly thank the contractors Ian Cannon Ltd for the amazing work carried out along with thanking the local community for being patient whilst the works were going on.

An open day where the team will take people around the site showcasing the works will take place on Sat 28 September from 11am – 1pm.