EGR and oil

Whilst working on getting the starter motor out I had to remove the airbox last night. Was intending to clean up the ERG at the same time but mine appears to have a thick layer of oil/gunk rather than a hard residue i've seen on some threads with pics. This also extended to the attached pipe. Is this "normal" or is oil getting in from somewhere. I recently changed the engine breather which wasn't in too bad a state.

hi just taken mine all off including mainfold to put on a egr bypass valve and was full of soft oily crap cleaned it all out so think it is normal

Yes, think it's normal as after all the air which is evacuated from the engine via the engine breather filter goes towards the turbo and via the turbo into the inletmanifold passing through the elbow pipe and the EGR housing, the more the engine breather filter keeps the oil inside (the cleaner that filter is or with the newly designed filter hopefully optimal result) the less oily crap will be on that road, the oil retained by that filter returns back into the engine, on the other hand the air coming in through the EGR valve is exhaust gasses, rather hot and makes things 'burn' in.

thanks for the explanation - it'll give it a clean through tomorrow. After i've got the bleedin starter motor off!