Rocks......£1000 delivery charge per ton

[MHS]

5 minutes ago, Tim Lewis said:

Good luck to you shifting twenty tons of stone on a quad bike!

A big quad and trailer can carry around 350kg but if there’s absolutely no access, it’s not going to work. 

[Sea Dog]

14 minutes ago, Tim Lewis said:

Good luck to you shifting twenty tons of stone across someone else's environmentally protected land on a quad bike!

Tweaked that a bit for you

 

[Tony Brooks]

Not allowed to use pack animals these days I suppose

[nicknorman]

PDG helicopters have bases in Inverness, Glasgow and Wolverhampton so not entirely sure about Aberdeen, although in the murky world of company mergers maybe they have now. However perhaps it is just that the finance company owning the group is based in Aberdeen.

Probably £1000 hr or so ferry costs, 120 kts in a straight line. This sort of work is PDG’s core business, underslinging stuff to inaccessible places in Scotland. If it wasn’t an economical way to do it, they would be out of business.

[WotEver]

10 hours ago, MHS said:

Is £20k to hire a helicopter from Aberdeen good value for money? 

Yep

[MtB]

Back in the day I get a gang of canal restoration enthusiasts would have carried the rocks manually themselves from the road to the reservoir over a weekend, for nothing...

[David Mack]

34 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

PDG helicopters have bases in Inverness, Glasgow and Wolverhampton so not entirely sure about Aberdeen, 

According to the clip the helicopter came from Inverness.

And presumably the company was contracted, and it was their decision which base to supply the helicopter from.

[nicknorman]

15 minutes ago, David Mack said:

According to the clip the helicopter came from Inverness.

And presumably the company was contracted, and it was their decision which base to supply the helicopter from.

Correct. I had the sound turned down when I watched the clip so didn’t hear the Inverness bit, I toook the earlier comments on trust.

 

As you imply they will have different types of helicopters in different locations with different equipment and pilot skill sets. Underslinging is mostly a remote area thing so no doubt that expertise resides mostly at the Inverness base.

 

Incidentally, the type of helicopter I used to fly was occasionally chartered out ad-hoc (ie not on an oil company contract) for around £8k an hour. Even with its 150kt cruise it couldn’t even get there and back for £20k! But then it could lift 5 tonnes in one go or carry 19 passengers.

[peterboat]

Shame they didn't ask the military to do it as part of an exercise

[Jen-in-Wellies]

1 hour ago, bizzard said:

Trucks could have conveyed the rocks as far as possible from then on medieval siege engines could have catapulted them onwards and upwards.

Medieval siege engine operators are trained to knock down walls with big rocks. Not a good idea to have one firing rocks in the general direction of a dam. ?

 

Hocolopters are used for taking supplies to and rubbish from mountain huts in the Alps. The price of a bottle of wine in one reflects this!

 

Jen

[David Mack]

8 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Shame they didn't ask the military to do it as part of an exercise

Perhaps they could have got 617 Squadron to place the rocks in precisely the right position. ?

[Mac of Cygnet]

8 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Shame they didn't ask the military to do it as part of an exercise

 

This is exactly what happened several years ago on the northern stretch of the Pennine way near where I live.  Large numbers of flagstones from a ruined edifice were airlifted by the military at nearby Otterburn - I estimate considerably more than the 20 tons in this case.  But I imagine that even the military are having their budget squeezed so much now that they can;t just send up a helicopter on many trips 'as an exercise'.

[Hudds Lad]

2 hours ago, Robbo said:

I grew up in the  Holme Valley area so not that far from you.  

I'm actually a Holme Valley lad, grew up on the mean streets of Netherthong

been living in the Colne Valley for just over 12yrs

[cereal tiller]

1 hour ago, Tony Brooks said:

Not allowed to use pack animals these days I suppose

It might be OK to use Wolves?but not hungry ones.Lol

[Robbo]

Found this that may be of interest to some..   From around 11mins in I think is the track on the way up...

 

[Robbo]

8 hours ago, Hudds Lad said:

if you knew the area, as i do with it being 5-10mins up the road from my house, you’d know that A road is near the top of a bloody steep valley. in fact if you look on google maps at the car park overlooking March Haigh its called Buckstones, people paraglide from there its that steep. The track up from Blake Lee Lane is not suitable for quads either, its narrow, rutted and passable by bike if the weather is good.

 

This vid quite interesting...  Wonder how many trips it would have taken to paraglide the stone in  

 

Edited October 11, 2018 by Robbo

[MHS]

I had some time spare this afternoon so walked up to see how the work was going. After a steep climb up the road I joined the footpath up to the reservoir. It didn’t look ideal for quads! The original track isn’t a public path and is through the nearby farm.

 

As I approached the reservoir I could see a CRT tent. Any thoughts of a cup of tea and a chocolate Hobnob were sadly dashed. There was no cheerful volunteer asking if I wanted to join CRT. 

 

As per the bbc footage, the water level is very low, but will soon fill up during a typical wet Yorkshire winter. 

 

They have managed to shutter an area adjacent to the spill way and have poured the concrete today. It was still slightly wet and I resisted the temptation to sign it. 

[Alan de Enfield]

Are they simply using the bags of stone to stop the concrete 'slab' from blowing away in this weekends forecast storms ?

[Robbo]

1 hour ago, MHS said:

They have managed to shutter an area adjacent to the spill way and have poured the concrete today. It was still slightly wet and I resisted the temptation to sign it. 

Did they say what they were doing?  I think the BBC said but only briefly.

[MHS]

1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Are they simply using the bags of stone to stop the concrete 'slab' from blowing away in this weekends forecast storms ?

No, but the tent is unlikely to survive up there. 

34 minutes ago, Robbo said:

Did they say what they were doing?  I think the BBC said but only briefly.

There was no one on site at 15.30 today, but the report said improvement to the spill way.  The stone in the maxi bags wasn’t for more concrete. Not idea for building a wall either. 

Edited October 11, 2018 by MHS