KidsOutdoors

During July 2007 I went away for a week with the National Trust. And Stayed at the National Trust Base camp in Dale Head, Edale. I Was part of a team of 10 on the “Youth Discovery working Holiday” a week long residential project for young people aged between 16 and 19.

This was my first time on a working holiday, and it was different from anything I had ever done before. My week of volunteering gave me a good insight of the work that the wardens put into the countryside. I helped to dismantle an old fence and construct a new one in its place. As well as clear part of a national trail and plant Cotton Grass on the top of Kinder scout.

Many of the other people I worked with were using the experience as part of their Gold Duke of Edinburgh's award. It as a new experience for everybody.The whole team instantly got along and on the first day of work we where introduced to three of the wardens that help to manage the high peak estate in and around Edale. It was only a short walk after breakfast to the work site, and we were ready to start. We where given the appropriate tools and shown how to dismantle the old fence, it took a while but we all soon got the hang of it; removing every individual staple, rolling the rusty wire and, and taking down the rotten posts. Not only did we have to take down the fence but carry each part back to the trailer on the land rover.

Every time a new section was taken down as we went along, we found ourselves having to walk further to get to the land rover! To speed things up and to stop the live stock from escaping we had started the construction of the new fence. This took a lot of hard work to knock the posts in and keep them in a straight line. Slowly but shortly the new fence was starting to take shape and by the end of day three most of the fence had been completed.Day 4 was well awaited, the day off where we had time to explorer the area. We had planned to rent out some bikes and go off on a bike ride, however this was the fist day the weather had let us down with rain. so we visited a cave and went for a pub lunch.

Thursday was clear up day. We finished the last remaining part of the fence and carried all of the tools and waste materials back to the base camp. Part of the team cut up the old wood to make fire wood to store, while others cleared a section of the over grown trail nearby. On our last day with the wardens we were taken up to kinder downfall to plant Cotton grass in the peat bogs, this was to help hold it together and to stop the peat running off the mountainside.In all 10,000 needed to be planted costing the national trust £5000, that's 50p per plant.

If it wasn’t for the hundreds of volunteers the trust gets every year they would not be able to undertake such large scale tasks.I enjoyed planting the cotton grass as we got to walk up Jacob’s ladder to the site and play in the peat bogs planning as many plants as we could. A few days previous we had helped to load up bags of plant trays ready for the helicopter lift . We where lucky of the good weather on Tuesday evening as otherwise the helicopter would not of been able to do the lift.

I had an amazing week working with the trust, especially in one of my favourite places of countryside. I enjoy walking in the area and eel its good to put something pace into an area of interest. I would like to go away next year again to do another working holiday and meet more new people.