Winter Work

This week's countryside blog comes from the Upland Ranger team based in the South Lakes area. 

When the team are working in the Fells a question we often get asked is:
"Do you work up here all year round?"
The answer to this is that we don't and this blog is about what we might be doing when we are not tackling erosion in the Fells of the Lake District.

We do spend much of the year in the Mountains and during the months between the clocks going forward an hour and until they go back again we expect to spend nearly all of our working time up in the Fells. This period is sometimes referred to as our "Fell Season".
 

Upland Rangers in their natural habitat during the "Fell Season"
(Taking a break before starting working on Striding Edge)

Outside of this "Fell Season", due to the shorter days and weather conditions, it isn't practical or safe for the team to stay in the Fells and we move onto work in the lower level Countryside. We call this our "Winter Work" programme (although it does include parts of Autumn and Spring too).

In general the team will help with anything that our Ranger colleagues in the South Lakes ask. There is never a shortage of lower level countryside work and we can find ourselves in high demand (it is not unheard of for our Area Rangers to "fight" for our time).

The examples below, from this years "Winter Work" programme, give an idea of some of the types of work.

We often work with rock and some dry stone walling is a common activity. There are always plenty of wall gaps to repair and we sometimes do some slightly more formal work too.  

Building a Dry Stone Retaining wall for a raised bed at Wray Castle

Another recent task, also using stone, has been some Slate-edged pathway.

A section of Slate-edged path at Wray Castle in progress

A common task in recent years for our Woodland Ranger is building tree cages to protect young trees.  This year has been no exception. 

Tree Cage under construction
(A nice winter day & a Wetherlam backdrop)

We might repair or construct countryside furniture such as gates, stiles and benches.  

Installing a new Bench at Wray Castle
(Donated by a family with connections to Wray Castle)

The finished Bench

We might also work in other areas of the National Trust where help is needed. For example the recent floods didn't affect our South Lakes area as much other parts of Cumbria and we have provided some support in other areas.

Helping clear a flood damaged fence with volunteers near Ambleside

Each year we usually help the Steam Yacht Gondola team winch Gondola out of Coniston Water and set up the frame to cover her for Winter repairs.    

Steam Yacht Gondola winched out of the water

The work we get involved in can be very varied and the examples above are a small selection based on recent months. Our team could be called on to help with any work needed in order to look after the countryside.

At this time of year we don't completely neglect our upland work and weather permitting we try to fit in some maintenance days. We also have an upland work party with the Fix the Fells Volunteer "Lengthsmen" at least once a month.

A Work Party on Browney Gill with the Fix the Fells Volunteer Lengthsmen
(A fairly grim day, we've had a few of these recently)

We also need to think about preparations for the forthcoming Fell Season and usually need to consider rock for our projects. There is seldom sufficient rock close enough to the paths we are going to work on and we may need to fill "heli-bags" so rock can be lifted to site by helicopter. This needs to be done in the early months of the year so it is ready for when we return to the fells. Carrying the heli-bags up to rock collection sites is often quite a good warm up for the main event of actually filling them.

On route to fill "heli-bags" with Rocks
(Image from 2013, we haven't started rock collection this year yet)

A bonus at this time of year, due to the shorter days, is that the light can be quite striking especially early morning or late afternoon as the sun rises or sets. A couple of recent examples are:

Sunrise along Windermere as the team started work at Wray Castle

Late afteroon light looking along Coniston Water at the end of a working day

If you would like to know more about the daily work of the South Lakes Upland Ranger team they can be found on Twitter @NTLakesFells or for more about Fix the Fells follow this link: Fix the Fells 

Posted by: Nick, Upland Ranger

A fond farewell to South Lakes

Every year when our annual cohort of full time, long term volunteers leaves, we make them (ask them to) write a blog reflecting on their experience. Well, this time it’s my turn to leave after a very happy couple of years working at South Lakes, and it seems only right that I should join in the tradition. It feels far too soon to be going, but when I look back at what we’ve been up to since January 2013, I’m amazed by the amount and variety of stuff we’ve managed to fit in!

I feel incredibly lucky to have worked in some of the most spectacular spots in the country…

…including hidden gems….

 

…on the most picturesque days.

I’ve built fences to make space for nature…

…and seen the results.

Experienced the madness of a film set…

…and the peculiar madness of Lake District wall gaps.

Not to mention that of spending too much time in the office.

And closest to my heart, I’ve met some great trees…

…and people.

So as the sun sets on my time at South Lakes, it's just left to say big love to the team, I’m gutted to be leaving x

Tree TV - for tree geeks everywhere

It's no secret to anyone here at South Lakes that I really, really love the rare small leaved lime trees hidden away in Coniston's gills. These beautiful trees are a direct link to the pre-human 'wildwood' - read more in my old blog post here.

Recently I had the chance to share my love for lime in a different format when Rob, our community ranger, made this atmospheric film one sunny summer's day. Naturally it's mortifying to watch myself on screen but it's great to get the message out about these time-travelling trees. Thanks Rob!

South Lakes on Screen

Rangers are fairly accustomed to strange requests, and we pride ourselves on our can-do attitude - but it still came as something of a shock when we were asked, ‘Can we do a high speed car crash in Tilberthwaite?’ This isn’t the only unusual one we’ve had over the past eighteen months – there’s also been ‘Can we take plaster casts of the quarry walls?’ ‘Can we build an enormous waterslide that chucks people into Tarn Hows?’ and ‘Can we zoom a huge drone above your woods?’ Contrary to what you might expect, we only said no to one of these requests (guess which one!), and they all came from one group of people – film-makers. With such a spectacular and characterful patch, it’s perhaps no surprise that lots of people making film and TV want to shoot here, and you can spot South Lakes in big budget feature films like Miss Potter and Snow White and the Huntsman, TV dramas like Safe House, the opening credits of Countryfile, and even a toilet paper advert!

A scene from Snow White and the Huntsman in Little Langdale - Universal Pictures

Paying our way

This summer we’re busy working with a film company making a new adaptation of Swallows and Amazons, another TV drama, and lots of smaller documentaries. Sometimes it’s almost a full time job. So why do we do it? The simple answer is that, as a charity, the money the film makers pay is absolutely essential to the National Trust, and allows us to do even more of our important conservation work. Every day film-makers spend using our land and buildings pays for woodland management, watercourse protection, visitor access routes, and all the other work we do to protect and look after South Lakes ‘forever, for everyone’. Filming is also a really important source of income for the Trust on a national scale – find out more here. These films also create great publicity - sometimes globally - and attract more visitors to experience our inspirational places.

Renee Zellweger at Yewtree Farm in Miss Potter - Phoenix Pictures

 Protecting our patch

We work closely with our tenant farmers and the films' location managers to ensure that nothing the film units do damages the land or buildings – sometimes this means placing restrictions on where they can work, or asking that they lay temporary tracks before driving vehicles across fields. For Swallows and Amazons, the crew will have to leave their trucks at the road and carry their gear by hand into woodlands, in order to protect and preserve these special places. We usually supervise filming to ensure all the conditions are being met, sometimes long into the night, and places are often left better than when filming began because of repairs to walls or improvements to farm infrastructure. 

And naturally, we’re not afraid to say no to those requests that we think are going to cause damage or degradation, or are otherwise inappropriate. So if you haven’t guessed already, the one we refused recently was the giant waterslide at Tarn Hows – although it did look like fun!

The Great British Migration

Spring is finally here. As most of us contemplate what and where we are going on our summer holidays this year, the mass summer migration has begun for Britain’s wildlife.

Could you imagine having to travel half way around the world to get to your destination, only to then repeat the same journey four months later? No nor can I but that’s exactly what hundreds of millions of our summer migrants do every year.

Birds

 

Bird species such as Wood Warbler, Redstart, Cuckoo (arrive early April and leave by end of June) Swallow, House Martin, Sand Martin, and Swift (last to arrive and first to go) arrive in the spring and have traveled for thousands of miles from either North-West or Sub-Saharan Africa. These species come to Britain to breed because the further North they go, the greater the abundance of food and more light in which to search for it.

Wood Warbler	Redstart
Cuckoo	Swallow
Sand Martin	House Martin

Butterflies & Moths

 

Would you believe that some of our butterflies and day flying moths migrate to the UK too?

Take the Painted Lady for instance; this migrates from North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, which is somewhere in the region of 9000 miles and at altitudes of over 1,000m.

For a tiny creature weighing less than a gram, with a brain the size of a pin head, and no opportunity to learn from older, experienced individuals, undertake an epic journey. It’s estimated that 11 million arrive in Britain each year, with around 25 million migrating back by the end of the summer.





The Red Admiral like the Painted Lady is another migrant to Britain, flying from North Africa and Continental Europe in there millions and covering similar distances as their counterparts.



The Humming-Bird Hawkmoth is a day flying moth that also migrants to Britain. These arrive in there thousands every year. Historically these were usually frequenting the South and East of the Country, However due to changes in our climate and hence warmer summers; they are being seen in Cumbria in larger numbers.



The Silver Y moth is our most common immigrant moth from Southern Europe, North Africa and parts of South East Asia, which can arrive in numbers up to 250 million in a good year (yes that’s correct you read it right!), with a staggering four times as many leaving as arrived.