A first for Daisy.

This week I’ve been working high on Seatoller fell above the wad mines.  Joe (colleague ranger), a volunteer and I have started work on replacing a ladder stile. 

The weather was good so it was also an opportunity for Daisy to have her first outing on the high fells.  She is still too young to do a long walk so I did carry her for most of the way up the hill.  But, once there, she loved running about in the sunshine exploring.

I'll try anything once...

. 

... but I liked the chew better ...

... and there was even a packed lunch!

We were working with some hefty pieces of timber that had previously been taken up the fell by volunteers.  The weather stayed fine and dry all day and we made good progress.  Joe and the volunteer will return to complete it - more examples of the huge contributions made by volunteers to what we do.

Later in the week we had been working in Watendlath so we were able to light a fire in the stove in the camping barn (bothy) to welcome the first group to use it.  It was looking superb when we left it so we hope they had a brilliant weekend.

It won’t be too long before I am back in Watendlath working with Borrowdale School’s pupils.  We might be nurturing the next generation of orchard experts!

                                             

Hi, Daisy here.  

He carried me!  What's that all about?  The indignity!!  I think sheep POO is great!  Roy doesn't seem to think so.

Sharing good practice.

As usual, last week’s half-term brought an early influx of visitors and the weather treated them well considering it is only February.  It could even have been described as warm at times!  It also suits us well as we in the Trust have been working to complete before Easter the projects I mentioned last week.

At the weekend I then went off with several other members of the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team to join the Kintail team for joint exercises.  Last year they joined us for rope-work exercises and this year we intended to share and practise winter rescue techniques.

 

On the Saturday, 15 of the Keswick and Kintail teams worked on the Falcon Ridge.  The RAF was also involved winching a new form of vacuum mattress with integral helicopter lifting strops. 

We stayed on the ridge line as far as possible because the warmer temperatures meant that there was an avalanche risk crossing snow.  We did have to negotiate a snow basin at one point in the day and, although all 15 of us were very experienced mountaineers, we were concerned and very cautious about the risk.  We were very careful about our route choice as we crossed the basin.  We had a good day though and gathered in the evening for a few shandies to round it off!

On the Sunday a group of us were back on the hill.  We had planned to do some ice-climbing but the weather was so warm that what we hoped would be ice-falls were actually waterfalls! It was much warmer than we expected and indeed was 15 degrees when we returned to the cars.  But it was great walking weather.

Overall it was a fantastic weekend.  Good practice was shared and we saw the new vacuum mattress with integral strops in action – that’s something we can consider adopting in the future.

Hi, it's Daisy here. He left me! He left me! He left me!

He came back!!

Improving facilities.

Much of our attention at present is concentrated on improving two of the Trust’s facilities for visitors.

One is the upgrading of the shop on the shores of Derwentwater.  It is located where the launches depart between the Theatre by the Lake and Friars Crag. 

There has been a big project over the winter months to expand it into an improved shop and visitor information point.  

There will also be a ramp to access an open area behind the shop that can be used as an open-air classroom and a place where visitors can enjoy their lunch.  It won’t be a picnic area in any formal sense but there will be some seating spaces on logs and some superb views over the lake.

Behind the shop is woodland.  During the first week of the Easter holidays I’ll be there with anyone who wants to volunteer to help out with the clearing of paths in the wood to make them accessible for those with limited mobility.  I will be organising a whole week of work there from Monday 1st to Friday 5th April inclusive.  The sessions will run from 10am-3pm (anyone not available for the whole period is obviously also welcome).  If you join us, come and introduce yourself – it would be good to meet a blog reader. 

The second is the refurbishment of a bothy at Watendlath.  Access to this with a car is along a single-track road past iconic view-points like Surprise View and Ashness Bridge. 

It is in a superb tranquil hanging valley and is ideal for that escape from the hurly-burly of modern life.  It is perfect for spectacular, quiet walking in the Kings Howe area.  You might even spot the otters!

The builders have been busy over the winter and the bothy has been transformed.  Small groups can now hire a section with 5 bunks, cooking facilities, showers and toilets.

Information is now available on-line here.

Daisy meanwhile is growing rapidly and, as excited, playful puppies do, she creates plenty of mischief!

Hi, my name is Daisy dog and I'm a truly modern dog having just been electronically chipped. I've heard Roy talking about apps but I'm not sure how to download them or even what they are.  I can run really fast now.

Daisy's debut.

Despite the wintry spell of weather we are having, I’ve been working outdoors with my volunteer team repairing a recycled-plastic board-walk.  Some of the kick-boards along the edge had been knocked off so they had to be replaced.  That’s just the kind of routine maintenance we expect to have to do. 

We also revisited  Force Crag Mine where there had been a quite a big wash-out under the water flume that is diverting water away from the archaeology that we are trying to protect.  So we had to do some fairly major repairs there.

I then returned to Watendlath orchard with some members of the Northern Fruit Growers Association who are advising us about the care of the trees.  They will be back to work with the children of Borrowdale School on their next visit.  The next step in restoring the trees to a healthy condition will be some pruning and the children will be able to help with that.

And finally some news of the newest member of my team - we collected our puppy Daisy at the weekend.  She and some siblings were leaving on the same day so their mother Storm will have missed them in some ways but might be relieved in others because they were becoming so big and boisterous.  Daisy has settled into her new home very quickly and has even been joining me at work.  She is growing very rapidly and in a week gained almost 25% in weight.  She is also learning very quickly and, at a little over 8 weeks recognised her name, would come when she was called and was house-trained barring the occasional accident.  Every morning her legs and nose look just a bit longer.

If you regularly follow the blog, you will no doubt see and read a lot more about her and her exploits!

Wintry work!

The main job this last week was the repair of a heck.  A heck* is like a swinging vertical gate across a river or stream that is designed to open when the stream is in full spate but otherwise is closed and acts as a stock barrier.  We needed to replace the top beam of a heck and this meant shifting the wood across the river. The wood we used was larch that I had felled in Trust woodland.  The bark was then stripped off as this means it will last longer.  We moved it over the river using a tensioned high-line (guiding line) and pulley system.  There were five hefty sections of wood the largest being 5.3 metres in length but, once we had the tension and angles right, it made the job a lot easier.

Just to give you a sense of the weather conditions – we found that the water was freezing on the ropes which meant that knot-tying was a bit tricky at times.  I placed my watch on the Landrover roof at lunch-time and it read - 4C!  But, my regular volunteers don’t give up easily and they did another splendid job.

Later in the week, I spent some time out with Joe (Ranger colleague) and we cleared some fallen trees with chainsaws.  This is part of our routine maintenance.  We respond immediately to any reports of potentially dangerous tree damage or blocked footpaths.  The cut timber is stacked to one side to act as eco-heaps.  These are habitats for insects, small mammals, fungi and also to encourage birds.  It all contributes to increasing and improving the bio-mass of the woods.

As we seem to have had the snow across most of the country, I hope many of you have been finding interesting animal tracks.  Even in urban gardens, a fresh fall of snow is ideal for revealing what visitors you might have in the quiet of the night.  And, no matter where you live, it is always a good idea to put out bird food and some water each day.  If you are still and quiet, hungry birds will approach quite closely to feed and you will be helping them to survive.

Otter tracks

Red Squirrel tracks

* Heck is a term used in a number of place names.  It has several possible uses relating to grids or racks.   It emerged from the language of the region south of the Forth/Clyde line to the northern modern English counties between the 7^th and 12^th centuries.

Orchard guardians and apprentice path builders.

I’ve just had one of those brilliant weeks that convince me that I have one of the best jobs in the world.  The weather has been very diverse and one day, as I continued my checks of the old mine sites, I found myself above low-lying cloud.  The pictures give you a sense of what that looks like but there’s nothing quite like actually being there.

Regular readers of the blog will know about our long-term project to upgrade the path around Derwentwater to access-for-all standard.  We have now embarked on the next phase of that and I recently made a field visit with a group of National Park apprentices and their supervisor plus The National Park’s Rights of Way Officer.  One of the discussion topics was what we have learned from our experience a couple of years ago of installing a recycled plastic boardwalk   Plastic performs quite differently from wood with temperature change and requires different expansion joints.

The apprentices are going to adopt a stretch of the path on the western shore as one of their projects.  The Park Authority will finance it and the apprentices will carry out the job.  So they are now working on drawing up plans and specifications and, once they have been cleared with me, they will get to work.  This is a collaboration where we all benefit.

I’ve also been to Watendlath on a visit with children from Borrowdale School.  Beside one of the Watendlath farms there is a long-disused community orchard that we hope to restore - it is the walled space in the centre of the picture above.  They have adopted the orchard as part of the Trust’s Guardianship Scheme.  On the day of their visit there had been an overnight snowfall.  Watendlath is a hanging valley approached up a steep hill so I checked the road condition early in the morning.  It was obvious that the snow and ice patches might be difficult for a minibus so we ferried the children there in our four-wheeled drive vehicles and the teacher’s Landrover.  Two trips successfully took us all to where we wanted to be and greatly enhanced their enjoyment. 

They did a huge amount of work and have now surveyed the orchard and devised a plan for the work they will be doing to care for it. (One of the Trust’s experts in heritage fruit varieties will be visiting to identify existing plantings and advise on their care.) The children also met Helen who has lived all her life in Watendlath and she was telling them tales of when her parents first married and moved into the valley.  For the children, this is history being told by someone who was there.  Showing them that they can have fun as they care for their surroundings is exactly what we want to do and they certainly enjoyed that day.