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News archive: Arkholme Core Route Duct Dig Photos

September 30th, 2012
Author: Chris Conder
Tags: arkholme b4rn community core dig trench
Posted In: Archive News

Even the Lune burst its banks again this week… that is usually a meandering river, not a lake!

Update, Monday 1st October, 7 hours late… But the dig is done. The core duct to Arkholme digital parish hub is now finished, and fibre will be blown shortly. All the photos on flickr and our facebook page.

Followers of the B4RN project will already know that the digging in of the fibre ducting is well underway thanks to the outstanding work by many members of the community. The weather has not been kind to us this “summer” and this has caused understandable delays. However it has not stopped work as has been demonstrated over the last week or so in the Arkholme area.

Part of the core route passes though Arkholme and so this is a critical part of B4RN network. Some people who have seen our Facebook page will have seen some of the pictures posted of the newly invented sport of Extreme Digging but we thought it would be good to post them all on the site as a slide show as they were so good.

Another friendly helper

Many may think that it’s mainly farmers digging but that’s not true. Last week we had doctors, a film editor, a film maker and a director, grandparents and grandchildren. (plus some dogs) In fact as you’ll see from one of the photos we have recruited our youngest B4RNstormer yet! We have also had several women of grit joining the men in the trenches.

As you can see from the pictures below it was extremely wet and muddy but that did not put the team off as the twin diggers dug a total of 3km of trench, they laid the ducting then covered and pulled it tight and the second digger filled the trench in. While some of the trenches were open the opportunity was taken to lay drainage pipes and electric ducting too.

As some will already know the B4RN secret tool is tea and cake as can been seen in some of the shots. Sue carried the tray so far down the field it was amazing it arrived intact, and Pat drives over from Docker every day with flasks and finds where the diggers are to bring refreshments.

The volunteer names have been written on the duct and can be seen on the flickr album or sponsor page.  Many thanks also to the farmers and landowners who have let us spread our muddy footprint all over their fields, one good thing about all the rain every day is that it soon washes away traces of our progress.Thank you from all the community for enabling this project. You can see in some photos where its dry the mark on the field looks enormous, but its mainly dirty grass. The final scar is about a foot wide, and we reseed it so it will soon be gone altogether as you can see in later photos of the same place.

Well here they are. Well done and many thanks to all involved. Truly inspirational work.

The Flickr site of the photos can be accessed here if your connection isn’t good enough to run the slideshow.