An army of volunteers.

It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by since I last worked with a group of Yorkshire volunteers but they returned for their annual visit last weekend.  They have been volunteering for the National Trust for many years and spend an annual weekend with me.  It’s always nice to meet up with them again and they always complete a lot of hard work.

We began the weekend working at Braithwaite with a group of volunteers from the village.  Some time ago I made a site visit with Jamie, the Trust’s archaeologist, and he noted the damage that was being done by trees and vegetation to the remains of an old mill dam.  This is an important part of the history of the village when it had a carding and woollen mill followed by a pencil mill in the 19^th century.  The village is actually much older and there has been settlement there at least since the 10^th century when the Norsemen arrived.

 

There had also been consultation with village residents with a decision to retain a mixed age and heights of vegetation as well as diversity of species so that there would be a wide variety of habitats.

The combination of the two groups of volunteers made a sizeable working party so we set to and made terrific progress towards protecting what remains and indeed in revealing its presence.  We also cleared part of the old mill race.  There must be many people who have walked past or over them without even realising that they are there.

On Sunday I had just the Yorkshire contingent working with me.  We went up Cat Ghyll next to Great Wood.  In places where the vegetation is predominantly gorse, it had overgrown the footpath.  This is a pitched stone path that we built a good few years ago and the encroaching gorse was beginning to make it difficult to use.  So, we got to work and chopped it back to clear the path.  There’s plenty of gorse left!

Whilst we were there, we popped up to the top of Falcon Crag to enjoy the view when we had our lunch. 

It was a very good day with all the volunteers doing their usual fantastic work.  I could not possibly do that much work in a weekend.  It can’t be said too often that the Trust’s thousands of volunteers are at the heart of everything that we do. A big ‘Thank you’ to every one of them.

Hi, Daisy here.

I’ve met more friends. It’s great.  Loads of people came.  We worked in the ditches and the mud and played.  It was great.  And the next day we went up a big mountain and that was great.