See before and after pictures of Wick Paths Group work in the town
A call for volunteers saw 18 local residents come out to help clean up and build new paths around Wick last Wednesday (September 1).
The Wick Paths Group (WPG) team beavered away on areas between Market Street and High Street to build a new path and then around Broadhaven to create a viewpoint, as well as general litter picking around Wick river.
WPG secretary, John Bogle, thanked all the volunteers for heeding the call to help transform the town and said: "It was a fantastic turnout of volunteers and we got a lot done.
"In addition to the path linking Market Street with High Street, we also created a new viewpoint above Broadhaven which will soon have a bench supplied by the John O'Groats Trail folk.
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7 / 7"We also had teams of litter pickers cleaning both sides of the river banks upstream from the Harbour Bridge including the old slip. In addition to the volunteer efforts we are also very grateful to Subsea 7 for the loan of an excavator and Wick Harbour and Graham Begg for the loan of trailers.
"It is really great to see what a difference a few determined people can make to our town."
A rumour persists that the grassy mound between Market Street and High Street could have been a graveyard hundreds of years ago but this may have just been a story to stop developers building on it.
"To be on the safe side, we only dug a couple of inches down," said Mr Bogle. The mound is a well-used shortcut for locals but there was also a path leading past the takeaway on High Street that is now blocked off and used for bin storage. Some of the masonry work in that area appears to date from the 15th or 16th centuries and could in fact be the oldest surviving structures in the town.
For more information about volunteering with WPG please visit its Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/RoyalBurghofWick
Related article:
Path to success for Wick volunteers