Gravel path as a linear drain?

[DavyStokes]

I intend to construct a gravel path around my sloping garden. As per recommendations on this site I intended to use 25mm pea gravel on a 75mm DTp1 sub-base. However, my garden gets very wet after heavy rain - if flows in from my uphill neighbours property.
If I were to use 75mm cleanstone instead of type 1 then I hope the gravel path would provide a linear drain and take the water to the bottom of my garden.
Firstly, would a gravel path using a cleanstone sub-base be serviceable? Secondly would it help with drainage?

thanks

Davy

[Tony McC]

It would be serviceable, but it would rapidly clog-up with finer material from the overlying gravel and from the surrounding garden, so no real gain.

For it to help with drainage, it would need to go deep enough to find a permeable stratum, which could involve a good deal of digging. A better strategy might be to use a separate land-drain system that collects excess water and directs it to a soakaway or other disposal point, and treat the path as a separate entity.

[techauthorbob]

I am having the same problems as this with a path across a clay garden and was wondering about the same method - not so sure now!.
I have had it mentioned to me that I should be laying hollow concrete blocks flat and end to end to make a drain, cut access holes in the sides at intervals and use these to feed land drains into.
Would this work?

[GB_Groundworks]

seems like a lot of effort cutting holes in the blocks, i do a lot of drainage in fields and sports pitches and we just use so called french drains. dig a trench sloping to wards your outfall. place a small layer of free draining porous backfill i.e clean stone(pipe bedding) place a perforated plastic drainage pipe in the trench to your outfall/ soakaway and then back fill upto 100mm of surface with same porous backfill. then either a piece of geotextile and cover with soil and turf or geotextile subbase and your path.

see http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain03.htm

giles