Help fix a fell for Christmas!
Published: 7 November 2008
What does the avid walker want for Christmas - a fleece jacket? Or maybe a new pair of boots? All good ideas - but there’s something else you can buy for the walker who has everything…
How about a gift certificate to restore a Lake District path?
A gift of £10 will pay for a metre of path-side vegetation, or £25 will pay to get stone moved to site. And if it’s a very generous gift… £250 will cover specialised drainage work, or even £600 for an hour’s use of a helicopter to fly stone to high places.
For every pound donated, the Heritage Lottery Fund will triple it, so a £10 gift certificate is actually worth £30 of TLC for the paths you love.
The Lake District’s high paths are world renowned and each year 20 million feet trample over them. Excessive wear and tear, along with high levels of rainfall, have taken their toll, leaving ugly scars and severe erosion.
This is where the work of the Fix the Fells partnership comes to the rescue. Fix the Fells is a partnership which works together to prevent further erosion of upland paths, through work by contractors, staff and a large volunteer force. Donations made to the partnership play a big part in enabling essential repairs to be carried out on the paths. The partnership is run by the Lake District National Park Authority, The National Trust and Natural England – and is further supported by Friends of the Lake District, The Tourism and Conservation Partnership and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Fix the Fells is a five-year programme, which needs to raise £5 million to pay for upland path repair. £2.5 million was raised under the previous project that successfully repaired 102 Lake District upland paths, with 74 still in need of desperate care.
Fix the Fells project adviser Richard Fox said: “Donations can be made online where an instant certificate can be printed out with a personalised message, showing how the money will help.
“Buying presents can be a nightmare, so we thought up a novel way of easing the pressure and helping preserve the stunning landscape into the bargain. It’s a great way for walkers to give something back.”
Richard points to a trail running to Sail from Scar Crags (part of the north western fells), now eight metres wide and running like a river in wet weather and he says: "Walkers use the sides rather than the surface, so the path is constantly widening.”
Make a donation and print out a personalised gift certificate from the Fix The Fells project. Click Donate now to find out more.
