The good and the ugly.

I sadly attended the funeral last week of Allan Alcock, a good friend from the Mountain Rescue team.  He had been an active member of the team since 1968.  Allan was one of the mainstays who was constantly sorting out the kit and the vehicles.  He always had a friendly word and is going to be much missed.

In last week’s post I mentioned wild camping on the high fells and how it can be a fantastic experience when it is done well.  A good wild camp will leave behind no damage, no debris and no lasting sign that it ever happened.  It is something that we encourage.  Unfortunately that is not always what happens.

Last weekend we had a joint working party with the National Park rangers and volunteers and one of the things we did was clear up the site shown in the pictures.  Clearly a large group had decided to party in one of the woods in Borrowdale.  They had cut down some small trees to have a fire.  They left behind all their rubbish including bottles and had even smashed some of them.  Why do that?

Thankfully the National Park rangers and volunteers joined me in clearing it all away to return the site to a safe and clean condition for others to enjoy.  It puzzles me that people would make the effort to seek out a beautiful place and then spoil it.  It is very easy to go and enjoy a beautiful part of the countryside without wrecking it.

Hi, it’s Daisy here.

I’ve been for a job interview.  I’m going to be a search dog.  Well, I’ve got a lot of work to do first.  There’s lots of training to do and there’s exams you have to pass but I reckon I’ll be great.

Winter has arrived.

Last weekend saw me with friends from the Rescue Team making the trip to the summit of Great Gable to join others for Remembrance Sunday.   

There was quite a lot of snow underfoot and we walked up through cloud. 
Daisy came with us and she enjoyed herself running around in the snow. 

We noticed on the way down a group wild-camping at Styhead Tarn – a fantastic place to camp and done properly, they would leave no lasting impact on the site.  

By the time we were making our way down, the cloud had cleared so a couple of guys were able to paraglide back down to Seathwaite.  What a great way to come off the hill although one of them said he was doing it for the benefit of his knees!  

During the week I worked with Jack and Joe on continuing to bring the Cockshott Wood footpath up to an access-for-all standard.  It will take some time to complete this but we hope eventually it will be possible for wheel-chair users to start at the Trust shop, visit Friars Crag then continue along the Lake shore circling back through Cockshott  Wood. Or enjoy a quiet woodland walk around Cockshott.

I also spent some time at Braithwaite School working with their Gardening Club.  We have levelled an area of their grounds where they are going to make a wild flower meadow this Spring and Summer.  We are planning to bring to the school a bale from one of our local farms that has good hay meadows so that we're not importing different genetic strains into the area.  It's also a lot cheaper than buying commercial seed.

Hi, it’s Daisy here. 

I’ve been up Gable.  I went up when I was little but Roy carried me last time.  This time I went all the way on my own.  It was great.

A bonfire in a downpour.

 We’ve had some weather this last week including a sprinkling of snow on the tops which is fantastic to see.  And of course it was the time for the bonfire celebrations.  We had it on Crow Park which is next to Derwentwater.  It is a beautiful place but, if the weather is bad, it is especially so there.  It just drives in off the lake.  But we just have to go ahead no matter what. So I was really pleased to see as many people turn up as did considering the weather.  It came in waves with not very wet followed by very wet!

But it was great to see the people who did come along to enjoy the bonfire.

A lot of our events are weather dependent but you just have to go ahead no matter what.  What happens of course is that the people who do turn up despite the weather intend to enjoy themselves so they do.  Those who came all seemed to have a good time.  The kids loved seeing a big fire with all the sparks flying.

Weather wasn't so good on the clean-up day either!

Daisy here.

Che’s been to stay and it was great.  He said it was OK if we slept on the settee.  Roy didn’t seem to think so.

Science and history.

Force Crag mine took centre stage again last week, firstly with a school visit and then a day working with my volunteer team.  The school group was from Braithwaite School in the village situated at the foot of Coledale Valley. 

There may have been mineral workings on Force Crag since the 16^th century but significant mining began in the 1800s to extract lead and silver.  When the price of lead fell to uneconomic levels, attention turned to extracting barytes.  In the mine's final years lead, barium and zinc ores were extracted.  Eventually a collapse in the mine led to its being closed in 1990 and it was handed over to the National Trust.  The buildings and machinery remain the only complete examples of their type in the Lake District and the mine is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument that is situated in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

For this school visit, John Malley (the Trust’s Water Adviser) joined us.  He is the Trust’s lead officer involved in the project to develop the best strategy for dealing with the water collecting in the old mine workings.  So the children were able to learn a lot of science, especially chemistry, from him.  They also had the opportunity to go inside the building and see the machinery that was used to crush the ores and to make ‘rubbings’ of machinery labels etc. as part of a pictorial record of the site.

It was an excellent day with one of their highlights being the wearing of hard hats to go behind locked doors where they could see the workings and experience something that the miners experienced!

Later in the week, I returned to the site with my volunteers to do some work diverting water around the scree slopes above the mine.  This is one of those jobs where the best option is just to set to work with shovels and wheel-barrows and some hard work hand-digging to channel the water away from the screes.  This should stabilise the slope.  My great volunteers were, as ever, undaunted.

Daisy here:

Me and Roy went digging in the rain.  It was horrible, horrible.  Then we went back with the volunteers when it wasn’t raining. That was quite good.

Coppicing & building eco-heaps.

We’ve just had the Friends of the Lake District Fell Care Day and I was working with a group of pupils aged between 8 and 11 from the feeder schools for Keswick School.  We were working in Cockshot Wood doing some coppicing.  Coppicing is a centuries-old way of managing woodland.  If trees are cut down to ground level they will send up new shoots from the stump or roots.  After a number of years, the new growth can be harvested and the cycle begins again.

Cutting back the trees in this way allows light into the forest floor.  This encourages greater diversity of both animal and plant species.  Bluebells, anemones and primroses can grow more vigorously.  Rotting wood-piles provide habitats for beetles, insects and small mammals.  This in turn brings in more birds and butterflies.  When the trees mature, the canopy eventually closes off the light to the woodland floor and the wood needs to be coppiced again.   Ideally there will be a newly-coppiced area close by for the species to migrate to when they need to.

So we started the cycle of creating a mosaic of different ages of coppicing.  We will also be building eco-heaps of cuttings to add variety to the habitats.

An extra bonus to this is that we can identify individual trees that we can leave with adequate space and light to grow to full maturity in future.  There should be some excellent specimens of oak trees for following generations.  These pupils will be able to bring along their own children and grandchildren to show off the results of what they are doing now.

I also had a group of students from the Lakes College who did some great work resurfacing a length of path that was cleared recently by my regular volunteers.  So we are making good progress on creating access for all around the wood.

It was an excellent day all round and it’s a big ‘Thank you’ to everyone who took part. The children enjoyed it so much that they didn’t want to stop at the end of the day!  That’s something we hope they will carry with them throughout their lives.

 Daisy here:

I’ve been running round the woods with lots of people - lots of children and they spent all day cutting sticks for me. It was great.

Big projects moving forward.

Once again I had The National Trust Regional volunteers joining me at the weekend. This is a group I work with twice a year and it was good to see them back again.  We worked in Cockshot Wood, the little wood behind the Trust shop at the lake shore.  We did some preparatory work on making accessible a section of the loop of footpath that goes around the wood.  This is an ongoing project aimed at making the whole of the path in the wood as accessible as possible for everyone.  Once it is completed, we will have opened up another stretch of path and woodland for wheelchair users, pram pushers and others with mobility difficulties to enjoy. This project is part of the National Trust’s campaign to get people “outdoors and closer to nature”.

Next week is a Fell Care Week when lots of volunteers from Friends of the Lake District and the National Park will be joining me and other National Trust staff to carry on the project.

During the week we had the Trust’s National Archaeological Panel visiting Force Crag Mine.  This is another ongoing project that I’ve mentioned before.  It has three parts to it.  First is to deal with the water that is discharging from the old mine.  So we now have some large diggers at work in the middle of a Scheduled Ancient Monument digging it up for the installation of settlement tanks.  It might look a bit shocking at first but all necessary consents have been granted after extensive relevant consultations including with archaeologists.  If you want to make an omelette, you have to break eggs!  In the long-term this will be beneficial for the site.

Our second concern is the interpretation and presentation of the site.  This was the last working mine of its type in the Lake District and is the only one surviving with all its machinery in situ.   We want to be able to tell its story using ways that complement the site. Thirdly, we need to develop a plan for its future preservation. So those were the three topics for discussion with the panel.  It will be interesting to read their conclusions.

As a backdrop to all these activities, we are moving quickly into Autumn.  The bracken and trees are changing colour day by day, the days are shortening, it is cooler and there are fewer people around.  I love the valley all year round of course but autumn colour on a cold, sunny day is spectacular.

Daisy here,

I’ve been mountain biking – well, running alongside Roy.  No photographs – I’m too fast.