Trail to close on weekdays for tree works

About 1,500 trees with ash dieback disease will be felled during the closure

A popular walking and cycling trail in the Peak District is set to shut on weekdays for six weeks.

The Monsal Trail will close in full or in specific sections for safety reasons from 6 January while various works are carried out.

The Peak District National Park said about 1,500 trees with ash dieback disease would be felled and fencing would be installed to support a stretch of "dilapidated" dry stone walls.

Matt Freestone, from the Peak District National Park, advised potential visitors to use other trials, and said: "We have the High Peak and Tissington trails that will remain open for the duration."

The Monsal Trail will remain open at weekends

Car parks, electric vehicle charging points, cafes or other businesses and facilities connected to the route will not be impacted by the works.

Mr Freestone, corporate property manager at the authority, said the trees "worst affected" by ash dieback would be removed, but workers would retain as many as they could.

"Some trees will display some signs of ash dieback but may survive, so we are trying to retain those in the hope they will build up some tolerance," he said.

"But the vast majority of ash trees will be removed along the length trail."

'Replenish the woodland'

Trees with the disease tend to become very brittle, affecting their structural integrity and presenting a risk to users of the trail, Mr Freestone said.

He added: "Our strategy to replace the tree cover is to let the woodland naturally regenerate.

"We will monitor that over the the next couple of years and if that doesn't really take off, we will do some restocking of native trees to replenish the woodland cover we have lost."

Mr Freestone said there were also a number of dilapidated dry stone walls along the trail, built in the 1800s when it was created as a railway line, and there was a risk parts could fall on to the path.

The authority is spending £60,000 to install fencing "along the downslope side of the walls to stop them collapsing on to the trail", he said.

He added ideally they would have rebuilt the walls, but this would have taken months and they did not want to shut the trail for that long.