Faffin around in Northern Ireland...

Working for the National Trust has many great benefits, one of the main being you are a part of a national organisation and you have colleagues in loads of interesting and beautiful places, including over in Northern Ireland (which can be easy to forget...sorry NI).  As such Rangers across the Trust have the opportunity (thanks to the generosity of the Mayled family, in memory of Andy Mayled), to link up with other Rangers allowing them to learn, discover and experience somewhere new.  So what greater contrast than the high fells of the Lakes to the hustle and bustle of Northern Ireland's capital Belfast!

From here.....

....to here!

This was the choice I (Upland Ranger Sarah!) made and over 3 days in June I swopped the 14 strong Ranger team in the South Lakes for the some what smaller 3 Ranger team in Belfast... 

The Belfast crew, the green helps them blend in...

Why Belfast I hear you ask?!  Well, I've done a wee bit of traveling, but hadn't yet made it to any part of Ireland, so when I heard about the Ranger link, heading over to Belfast seem a good way to kill two birds with one stone.  It also helped that I knew the Ranger, Craig, from the work I do as a rep with Prospect, the NT's union.  As such it wasn't long before we had dates in the diary, ferries booked and I was getting excited to be somewhere new and completely different.  Only as it turned out it was different...yet the same!

Same old fencing job, different location!

Let me explain.  You see, although the South Lakes has a 13 strong Ranger team, that team is broken down into more specialist teams and day to day I mainly work with the 3 other guys that make up the Upland team.  So rocking up to the Ranger office at Minnowburn and meeting Colin, Mick and Craig felt like a temporary exchange of the usual faces.  Accompanying them was a friendly bustle of volunteers, and lets not forget Bella!

The South Lakes massif

Over the 3 days I got to see some of the main bits of work the guys get up to in Belfast.  From working with school groups pond dipping and in the forest school, to practical work on one of their coastal sites in Port Muck, to the intricacy of project planning a car park development at Minnowburn where they can annually receive over 150,000 visitors.  It's what we as Rangers would expect to be involved in, it's just the balance of jobs or the habitats that may be slightly different. 

Irish language school group

Pond dipping

A very Ranger suitable totem pole, all about cake!

 For example in Belfast the large majority of their volunteer input is from large groups, whether those are corporate groups wanting to get out and do something different, or school groups looking to have a mix of education and conservation.  Partnership working is also key, Minnowburn itself is only 120 acres within the much larger Lagan Valley, covering 3500 acres in total and welcoming between 2-3million visitors a year.  Being on the doorstep to a population of over 300,000 people living in Belfast the opportunities to work with communities are well taken, a great example being the community garden that sits just behind the Ranger office and comes complete with a wood fired pizza oven for those long summer evenings!

Community garden, a great space

All in all it was a really interesting week that I would recommend to all Rangers.  It makes a refreshing change for both sides of the link and allows for plenty of learning, even if to start with you don't know how to articulate what that learning is!  For me though its back to the grind stone and back to home sweet home.

Home...literally- i can see my house!

By Upland Ranger Sarah
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