Tree planting in Grasmere and peat bog restoration work in Ullswater

It's been a busy few weeks since our last post so here's a taster of what we've been up to.
        

Earlier on, in mid-February, we spent a week tree planting on the slopes of Helm Crag. The work was funded by Natural England. We planted 1800 scrub woodland species over an area of 6 hectares, working alongside other National Trust staff and assisted by some of the Fix the Fells volunteers.

As the trees develop, they will help stabilise the soil and reduce rainwater runoff. They will also provide a valuable habitat for birds, such as Tree Pipit and Yellowhammer, mammals and insects.

You can read in more detail about the work on the Central and East Lakes Rangers blog... here, so here are just a selection photos of the work over a very wintery week.

Having a quick debrief on the first day

Planting out the trees

Looking towards Dunnmail Raise on the last day

Later on in the month we spent a day carrying out some peat bog restoration work up on Matterdale Common with the Ullswater team and staff from Cumbria Wildlife Trust.

Over 70 per cent of peatlands in England are in a damaged state, often due to drainage, overgrazing, forestry or regular burning. This damage prevents the peat remaining waterlogged, causing plants to die off. Without vegetation cover, bare areas of peat are formed which rapidly erode. This damage can be repaired by revegetating and blocking drains to help raise the water table. 

The project has been overseen by Cumbria Wildlife Trust who've used digger contractors to do the main bulk of the work, but as a member of the Cumbria Peat Partnership we were eager to lend a hand with areas that couldn't be done with machinery.

Our main job was to plant heather on the bare areas of peat to help speed up the regeneration process.

 Heather plants ready to be planted out

So we took the trays of heather out into one of the two stock excluded areas on Matterdale Common and planted up in the barest patches.

Planting out the heather 

Areas of peat that have eroded (often as a result of grazing, historical peat cutting and water damage) may form steep banks, known as hags. These hags continue to erode, due to water flow and wind damage, forming large areas of bare peat that plants struggle to survive on.

By reprofiling the banks to an angle of around thirty degrees it gives the heather seedlings a much better chance to flourish. Many of the hags have been removed using the diggers but we were able to get to a few areas that the diggers couldn't reach and to also work on some of the smaller hags.

 Grading one of the peat hags

You can see the area where we were working in the photograph below and also the difference between the grazed and ungrazed areas. The area in the distance was fenced off about 10 years ago allowing heather and other peatland plants to return, this should further improve following the recent work.

Bundles of heather used for blocking drainage

You can learn more about peatland restoration on the Cumbria Wildlife Trust website... here.

We're Recruiting!

If you've ever fancied the Lake District fells as your office here's your chance to live the dream... *

We are currently recruiting for a fixed-term, until 1st April 2019, Assistant Ranger (Uplands) here with us in the Central and Eastern Lakes.

Click here https://careers.nationaltrust.org.uk (Central Lakes) for further details and to apply (update: now closed).

Two positions, one fixed-term, one permanent, are also available with the North Lakes team, link here... https://careers.nationaltrust.org.uk (North Lakes) (update: now closed).

*Note: Good weather can not be guaranteed.

Resuming our upland work

Since our last blog post we've started our Fix the Fells work repairing a few of the upland paths in Grasmere, Langdale and Ullswater.

Our first job was to prepare for our work up on Gowbarrow that we'd started last year. Once again we needed to fly some materials to the work site, so we set about filling some bags with gravel with a little help from the Langdale & Grasmere ranger team.

 Loading the bags with gravel

The day of the lift went pretty smoothly and we thankfully got all the materials flown to site.

 Flying the materials on to Gowbarrow

Another job that we're working on this year is at Helm Crag.

Starting work

You can see in the photograph below that the path had previously been worked on, but some of this had started to fall out as the ground around it had eroded. The bits that had not been worked on have also deteriorated.

 Bottom section before starting work

Rock had been flown to the site previously but we're also supplementing it with rock that had been used for previous repairs.

 After a few days work

You can see in the following photograph how bad the path has become. There's a lot of loose rubble on the path and the bank to the left is badly eroded.

 Mid-section before starting work

After just a few days work the path has already started to take shape.

Mid-section after being worked on

We're also working up at Esk Hause again this year, continuing to widen the path and improve the drainage.

 Old path before repairs

It takes about two and a half hours to walk to and from the work site, plus there's also a time consuming drive on top of that, so this really eats into the time left for working. Because of this, we're being helped out by the North Lakes team this year, to help speed things along.

The North Lakes team lend a hand

Cairns, a help or a hinderance?

Over recent years there's been a definite increase in cairns being vandalised. Much of this is presumably done with good intention, but based on inadequate knowledge.

We've often heard people suggest that "there are too many cairns" or "stones are better on the footpath than on a cairn". In some ways this is correct, but cairns still have a vital part to play on the fells. Cairns were originally built to help people find their way along a poorly defined path, and many have historical significance.

Large cairn on the right-hand-side of Stickle Ghyll

You can see a cairn in the photograph above that has become excessively large and no longer really serves it's intended purpose. The path is well defined and even when the cloud is down you'd struggle to get lost on a pitched path like this. The cairn has also reached a height where it is starting to fall back onto the path, which narrows the path and may make it difficult to walk on.

Having said that, there's very little surface stone around now so it's unlikely to get much bigger and cause much of a problem. It's also been around a long time, and it actually serves a purpose of keeping people on the path, which helps prevent erosion. So in this instance it'd be useful for those few stones on the path to be added to the top, but otherwise it can be left alone.

 Cairn at Rossett Ghyll, destroyed and thrown on the path

The photo above shows a cairn that has been knocked down for no apparent reason. We actually built this cairn as part of our footpath repair work to help guide people down the path. It's at a point where the path originally split, one route headed straight down the ghyll and the other followed the path we'd worked on. Before working on the path, the erosion in the ghyll was clearly visible from the valley below, but we've spent a lot of time revegetating it and it's now started to blend back in with it's surroundings. So by building the cairn, anyone who's a little unsure which way to go will hopefully follow the path, rather than causing more erosion in the ghyll.

 Rebuilding the cairn at the top of Rossett Ghyll

It seems strange that somebody would want to destroy this cairn, since it's not particularly visually intrusive and by looking at it you can tell there's been some effort made to build it and it's therefore likely to have a function. Also, why throw the stones onto the path, making it more difficult for people to walk on? This could possibly come from the idea that "stones are better on the footpath than on a cairn". The thought behind this statement comes from the fact of stones that are in the path are better left where they are, as they help it all bind together. Don't prise them out of the path to add them to a cairn.

Repairing the cairn at Stickle Ghyll

The above photograph shows another cairn needlessly scattered on to the path. This cairn was also built to help people find the path. In good weather it can be difficult to find this path, but in bad weather if you've never walked it before it's more or less impossible. This can, of course, have safety implications and there have been instances of cairns being removed, which has led walkers to become lost. This has led to Mountain Rescue Teams unnecessarily being called out.

We'd only ever really recommend removing a cairn if it is obviously very new, eg. two or three stones, and looks like it has been built by one person for no apparent reason. In this case it may be worth throwing the stones off the path to discourage others from adding to it. In this day-and-age unless it's for safety reasons, or to guide people onto a path, there's no real reason to be building new cairns, or indeed add to them.

So if you ever see a cairn and think you should add or remove stones from it, next time ask yourself a few questions.

• Is the cairn performing a purpose? 
• What would the surrounding terrain look like in bad weather, would the cairn then have a purpose?
• Does the cairn really need any stones adding or removing from it?
• What might the consequences be if I dismantled or built a cairn here?
• Is the cairn old, and possibly have historical significance?

If you're ever in doubt it's probably safest to just leave it alone, as generally if left alone it won't cause too much of a problem. Problems only really arise if a cairn becomes so large that the path splits either side of it which may lead to a wide erosion scar. But in this instance it's not a one man job to fix, and if we perceive it as a problem we'll arrange a volunteer work party to properly dispose of all, or part, of the cairn.

Working with volunteers on Gowbarrow

Over the course of the year we've spent a fair amount of time repairing the path up on Gowbarrow in Ullswater, and to help us achieve this work we've had fantastic support from numerous volunteer groups.

Although the path had previously been worked on a few years back, those sections that have been left had really started to worsen. You can see here just how bad the path was getting, with bare sections of peat which were steadliy getting wider and wider.

After some consideration on what would be the best method to repair the path we decided we needed additional materials as there was little suitable rock on site. So earlier this year several tonnes of gravel and rock was delivered to a nearby site and we filled the bags.

With the bags all filled, the next job was to get it up to Gowbarrow. A helicopter was used to fly it in, with the bags dropped near to the most eroded areas.

With the bags now in position we arranged our first work party. A group of Fix the Fells volunteers came out with us for a couple of days. Our job was basically to dig a shallow trench through the peat and fill it with the gravel from the bags to create a hard surface for walking on.





The next group to help us was from the Environment Agency's North West team. Once again we struck lucky with the weather and by the end of the day we'd completed another good section of path.

Shortly after this we were joined by a National Trust Working Holiday for a week. The section that we were working on is shown to the left. We decided to move the path from it's original location (in the first picture above) higher up the bank. We did this as the line was less undulating and so the new path will be more sustainable and less likely to erode at a later date.


So we set to work. Although it always seems wrong putting a path through an untouched area, given a bit of time the original path will green over and, in this instance, eventually the heather will return and nobody will be any the wiser.

Due to the close proximity of the crag, the bags had to be dropped a fair distance away from the new path.

To overcome this we filled buckets with gravel and created a chain of people moving it to where it was needed.

After a few days the new path was really starting to take shape.












To help make the path more durable we used a whacker-plate to compress the surface.

Our next group of volunteers were school children aged 10 & 11 and accompanied by the Field Studies Council. They joined us for an afternoon to help them understand the impact that visitors to the Lake District have on the environment.Though only with us for a few hours they managed to get another decent section of path completed and also seemed to have great fun doing it.

As there was still a bit more work to do on the section, we arranged another Fix the Fells work party to finish off where we'd started with the school group.




Word had obviously spread from the Environment Agency about our work up on Gowbarrow, and later on in the year we were joined by another group, again from the North West.

Even though the weather had noticeably started to deteriorate since earlier in the year, we completed another good section of path.

With the days now shortening we had one more day to finish our work for the year. We were again joined by the Fix the Fells lengthsmen with numbers bolstered by staff from the Lake District National Park Authority, including Richard Leafe, the Chief Executive.

We had some more resurfacing work to do and also a large side drain that needed to be dug out.

It's really been a fantastic team effort to get this work done but there's still plenty more to be done. We'll be back working on Gowbarrow again next year for Phase 2, so maybe we'll see some familiar faces again then.







Over the course of the year we clocked up an amazing 162 volunteer days. Although we said it at the time we'd really like to reiterate how thankful we are for everybody's help. The work on Gowbarrow is incredibly labour intensive and there's no way we could have completed it without all the additional help. Thank you.

A few more photographs from our time on Gowbarrow can also be seen here... Gowbarrow photographs.

Preparing for our upland path work

It's now the time of year when we start thinking about getting back up on the fells and resuming our upland path repair work. This means spending a few weeks filling bags with stone in preparation for them being flown to site by helicopter to the paths that need working on.

This year bag filling has proved slightly more challenging than usual as due to all the heavy snow we've struggled to get to our rock collection sites, and also finding any rock under the thick blanket of snow. You can see in the photo below just how bad it's been. In this instance we had hoped to get up and assess the path leading to Red Tarn in Ullswater to see exactly how many bags we'd need, but in the end this proved to be fruitless.

 

Heading up to Red Tarn

As Ullswater has suffered much worse with the snow than Grasmere we managed to fill a few bags on Helm Crag while waiting for some of the snow to melt elsewhere. These will be used for landscaping around the sub-soil path that we've been recently working on.

Bag Filling at Helm Crag

Another one of our jobs this year is repairing the path on Gowbarrow. This work will require building stone drains, culverts and resurfacing. The original path was worked on a couple of years ago using a digger to create a subsoil path, but in a few areas no decent material could be found on-site for surfacing it. This has lead to the path starting to deteriorate in patches. We therefore decided that we'd fly some gravel to site which we'll use to prevent it getting any worse. The gravel is locally sourced and compacts to a hard surface, it also doesn't wash clean so won't be too intrusive.

Filling bags for the Gowbarrow job

Thankfully we had the use of a mini-digger so it wasn't long before we had all the bags filled with gravel and ready to be flown. Now fingers crossed that the weather is a bit more onside during the helicopter lifts next week.

The bags filled and ready to be flown

Finishing our repair work at Mickleden

Over the last couple of weeks we've been busily working on the Mickleden project, so we can move back onto Stickle Ghyll for a few weeks, and hopefully finish our work there before the weather deteriorates too much.

Much of this work has again been upgrading the old path to make it more user friendly. You can see in the photograph below a set of risers (a line of stones dug into the ground to slow down the rate of erosion). Originally these risers would have been dug in at ground-level or, at least, with very little stone showing above the ground. Over time, the soil has eroded out in front of the risers leaving behind large steps that are more difficult to walk on.

Path before repair work

As this section of path is next to a beck which has been known to overflow during heavy rain we decided to build a pitched path incorporating the old risers. This has helped reduce the height of the steps and will also help the path stand up to the rigours of flooding.

Completed section of path

Another important part of this project has been the landscaping. You can see by comparing the two photographs above how the side-stones that run in a straight line (top picture) have also been removed and replaced with larger stones, in a more natural looking way. Subtle changes like this are unlikely to be noticed by most people but it's all part of our work trying to make the paths blend in more sympathetically with the surrounding landscape.

Once the path and landscaping was done we finished off this section by selecting a suitably large, and flat, stone and moved it into position as a stepping stone. The beck, which flows out of Rossett Ghyll can be really difficult to cross after heavy rain, so with the new stone in position people will be able to get to the other side much more safely.

New Stepping Stone in place

With our work at Mickleden finished (at least for this year), it was finally time to take down the shed, so there's no chance of it getting blown down in the winter. It'll stay here until it's ready to be moved to a new site next year.

Flat-packed shed, ready to go

Herdwick Sheep

Perhaps the main influence on the Lake District landscape is that which is exerted by upland hill farming. It's hard to imagine that without any human intervention by grazing with sheep or tree felling, many Lakeland valleys would be densely wooded up to the higher fells.

Cumbria has two native sheep breeds; the Rough Fell, which tends to be more common around the Shap fells to the east of the County and the Herdwick which is distributed over much of the central and western Fells.

Herdwick ram

Both native breeds are considered threatened by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) as over 75% of their population are found within a radius of less than 20 kilometres. This makes them extremely vulnerable to disease epidemics such as Foot and Mouth and Bluetongue. The most at risk of the two breeds is the Rough Fell which is listed as Category 2, Endangered.

Rough Fell ram

Although the Herwick is commonly seen around the central Lake District fells, it is listed as a Category 3 breed, which is classed as Vulnerable. The Herdwick is believed to have become established from a flock of 40 sheep that were washed ashore from a Norwegian ship that was wrecked off the Cumbrian coast in the tenth century, but nobody really knows for sure.

The Herdwick is an extremely hardy breed and can survive up on the high fells throughout the winter. Sheep owned by different farms remaining mostly separate due to their ability to become heafed (or hefted). Heafing is when individual sheep return to the area of fell where they were weaned as lambs. So if a lamb is brought up on a particular area of fell it will, by and large, remain in that area without the need for any fences.

When first born the lambs are very dark brown (almost black) in colour and as they mature firstly their faces start to become paler.

Herdwick lamb

The main body of the sheep also becomes lighter over time and at the age of around one year you have what is referred to as a hogget, or hog. 

Herdwick hogget

Eventually the hoggets lighten even more in colour to the characteristic grey fleece of the sheep that is most commonly encountered. The fleece these days is worth very little, though it is extremely hard-wearing so is excellent for making rugs and carpets and can also be blended with softer wool to make it more suitable for knitting.

Freshly sheared Herdwick ewes

Herdwick meat and woollen products are now much more widely available from farm shops and specialist retail outlets around Cumbria, so next time you see some why not give them a try?

All photos credited to K. Burrows