When A Plan Comes Together

For the last few months I've been involved in a community project to develop a disused quarry and woodland area into a mountain biking / walking / outdoor activity area for locals to enjoy. It's been a long hard slog (even longer and harder for those whose involvement started before my time) and we've had to jump through all sorts of hoops around planning permission, funding, leases and so on. Progress was often so slow, it felt like we were moving through treacle... target launch dates came and went and we were still trying to battle through red tape...

Then all of a sudden things started slotting into place! Planning conditions got signed off, permission to use part of the land was given, a funding grant was paid out, all within the space of a couple of weeks. So all last week a team of specialist contractors have been on-site building the first phase, a mountain bike skills area with all sorts of jumps and other cool features. It's really taking shape very quickly, which is a breath of fresh air after all the delays.

Today I had a walk up there to check on progress. I took lots of photos of the work in progress, but piles of mud and clay aren't really all that photogenic (am sure it'll look very attractive when it's finished). So instead I chose this more figurative image that hides the mystery of the work itself for now :-)