Coniston Team
by Rob Clarke, sponsored by Heart of the Lakes Cottages
Teamwork through fair weather and foul!
May 2009
Working as a four man team on the high fells of the Lake District would, you’d think, be a fairly lonely and insular task. However, not long in to the new season and we’ve barely had a day to ourselves.
Apart from our main project we’ve had the monthly work party day with the Lengthsmen, our long term and experienced regular volunteers. This was held on Wansfell above the Troutbeck valley and despite the very poor weather was a productive day of stepping stones, pitching and landscaping. We’ve also been working with the staff from the National Trust’s basecamp at High Wray. They take volunteer groups and working holidays out all year round and are an important link to the wider community. We spent a few days in more very wet weather helping them collect stone – more bag filling! – for a group to work with later in the year and a week between the Wrynose Pass and Crinkle Crags with a working holiday who’d come to experience upland path work. Luckily the weather was considerably better for the working holiday week.
Last year we worked on the south side of Stake Pass leading up from Langdale, this year we’re over the top and on the north side, above Borrowdale. It’s an interesting task as the character of the path is very different to the south side. It still runs in a series of zig-zags, a legacy of it being an old pony path, but doesn’t really have any stone laid down as a path surface. To try to keep this feel we’re attempting to restore the path to its original line and create a surface of compacted sub-soil, a similar technique to that seen in Scotland on some of the stalkers paths. We’re still early on in the project but it’s starting to look quite promising already.
The new path takes shape ….
We’ve been sharing the voyage of discovery into this new (for the Lakes) technique with other National Trust teams. We had two new members of the Borrowdale team with us for a week, which moved our project on and gave us the chance to get to know them. At the moment we’re working with the Western Valleys team, something which wasn’t originally going to happen until we all joined forces on a joint project on Bowfell. Our two teams have also got an additional member for the summer months on short term contracts.
Many hands ….. a selection of different team members
All these path workers make an impressive sight (we like to think) and we’ve had a few surprised comments from passing walkers. In the end though everyone seems to appreciate that these numbers are enabling us to complete sections quickly and keep disruption to a minimum. The only disadvantage is that we can’t all fit into our rather small shed at lunchtime on wet days, like the one pictured below, meaning a split shift and long wait for a break for the second group!
When it comes to weather, we see the lot!
