Volunteers at High Wray Basecamp
February 2010
Looking back, looking forward
We’re in the middle of our quietest period at the moment, at least with regard to volunteers. For much of the year we’re busy most weeks working with groups, but come winter there’s couple of months when everything calms down and we have a breathing space to plan ahead for the next year.
It’s also a good chance to look back on last year. It’s been great to pull together all the information about our varying groups and the brilliant work they’ve done.
A particular highlight of the last year has been the setting up of new partnerships with the mental health charity 'Mind' and the young person’s charity 'Fairbridge'. Mind have been working with us as part of ‘Out There’, a project to promote mental well being across Cumbria by involvement with the outdoors. They’ve been coming out to work with us on a regular basis and this partnership is acting as a template for other areas in Cumbria, with the NT property at Sandscale starting regular groups this year. Fairbridge are a national charity supporting young people aged 13-25 to develop the confidence, motivation and skills they need to turn their lives around. They visited us for the first time late last year and are already booked in for more this year!
Above: Volunteers from Mind with some shovelling to go; Fairbridge volunteers really loved their path!
Both these groups really enjoyed their time with us and we’re looking forward to working with them in future.
Another highlight of last year was ‘The wall of the year’. This was a stretch of around 80m of drystone wall that has been rebuilt entirely with volunteer power. In total around 50 people have worked on this wall, most of whom had no previous walling experience. While we called it ‘wall of the year’ because we worked on it all year, we also think the quality of the work produced was so good it could have won an award!
Above: Drystone walling working holiday members show off their work.
We’ve still had the chance to be out doing some practical work though, mainly thanks to the Fix the Fells lengthsmen. For a while now they’ve been coming to work with us on regular days, to learn other conservation skills on top of their upland path work. After many days hard work learning dry stone walling (they played a major part in the ‘wall of the year’) during the months before Christmas they recently had their first taste of hedge laying with us. It’s a very different discipline to walling and we had a very thorny and difficult hedge to deal with.
Above: Gently does it!
It was an enjoyable day and despite the occasional thorn prick everyone said they’d be back for more before the hedge laying season is over.
So now we’re eagerly anticipating our first groups of the new year, in another few weeks we’ll be so busy that we’ll have forgotten all about this quiet period!
by Rob Clarke
