It’s often striking how varied a National Trust ranger’s job can be. For proof of this you need look no further than some of the entries on this blog that cover subjects as diverse as working with volunteers on mountain paths (3rd October) to spending a few days in Manchester city centre (8th August), building storage compounds for tender boats on Windermere (25th July) to researching mysterious natural phenomena (27th June).
A recent couple of days spent editing video footage highlighted this too. Back in May I filmed a great (if noisy) day working with Littledale Hall therapeutic community moving 20 tons of stone 400 metres uphill as part of the Claife Station project, but hadn’t had the chance since then to put it together into a short film.
However, a few weeks ago I was given the chance to film the opening of the new ‘Peter Rabbit adventure’ rooms at Wray Castle. Being new it was much more important to get this film completed as quick as possible, so I set aside a few days to do so and at the same time managed to complete the Claife Station one. Very pleasing!
You can see both of the films here:
Watching them back was what got me thinking not just about the variety of a ranger’s role, but of the amazing contrast between the different people the National Trust can be involved with. These two groups couldn’t have been less like each other; adults taking back control of their lives after struggling with substance abuse problems and primary school children excited to be entering the world of their Cbeebies heroes. Despite their differences it was brilliant to see how much they both got out of their days with us. Try as I might I can think of few organisations that can boast this broad a spread of appeal – makes you proud to be a ranger!
If you fancy checking out both Claife station and Wray Castle then they’re handily at either end of a lovely lakeshore walk. To refer back to the blog again, the entry from 30th May has a description of this. Do bear in mind though that from 2nd November the castle is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
By Rob Clarke, Basecamp community ranger
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