New gate at Westwood

Our mission for this Westwood upgrade was to install a new gate and to put new latches on to two other gates where they had been vandalised.

We meet Amanda Hill (volunteer co-ordinator) early on Saturday morning at the Worcestershire County Council depot, luckily we have a large trailer at home and this came in very useful to collect the new gate from the depot. With only a short journey to go to get to Westwood we were on site early and met up with Sue and her husband who's land the bridleway crosses.

We carried tools and the new gate the short distance to where it was to be installed, this gate has been upgraded to a horse gate with a specialist latch so that riders do not have to dismount.

Steve and my other half Shawn set about removing the original gate and lining up the new one, thank heavens new gate posts were not needed as the gate width was exactly the same. All we needed to do was move gate hitches and align it all up so it opened easily from horseback.

Steve set about tooling the new latches into place and then they hung the gate and we tested it to see how easily it swung to and fro, very important when on a horse, we all know gates that can be opened but damn hard to shut..