Another busy week of different things: 22-03-2016

This week was another one of those variety packed NCV days with reports and photos coming from different venues. 

• Stripe Head Farm, Wath 

On a glorious sunny morning in Nidderdale 12 NCVs and a 5 strong Heritage Skills student team turned up to plant 100 trees at Stripe Head Farm, near Wath, to help promote a woodland conservation environment. We welcomed a new volunteer to the team called Richard.

Thankfully the farmer arranged for tubes, stakes, trees and most of our tools to be ferried up the steep hill to the planting location, a steep fenced in ghyll area.

 That's rather a steep, narrow ghyll to plant trees in.

It is indeedy. 

Undaunted, the sherpas commence their ascent.

The experienced tree planting team soon made short measure of planting the 100 trees wherever space and terrain allowed. 

We could fit one or two trees in here...

...and here...

...and even down there.

Surely not up there?

Yes? 

Oh, OK then.

Angela tries a novel approach to tree planting - 

or does she just want to inspect Ros K's pink wellies?

By 11am, all the trees were planted and we all enjoyed a break in a field overlooking Nidderdale and Gouthwaite reservoir.

Once done Josh practised his air archery.

The end result. Nice job folks.

This was not to be just a day of quick fire tree planting for the NCVs though. While some made a break for more tree planting at the Dacre nature reserve (see below), the majority headed back down to Pateley Bridge and up Greenhow Hill past the tired looking cyclists to go to.....

• Toft Gate Lime Kiln, Greenhow  

Here, in decidedly cooler climes, nine NCVs and the Heritage skills team listened to our leader explain the precise instructions, detailed by Historic England, in order to perform wheelchair access path maintenance around this scheduled ancient monument.

A preliminary walk over survey filled most of the volunteers with scepticism about the existence of a wheelchair path at all. There was quite a lot of nice healthy grass though.

Believe it or not - there's a gravel path 

somewhere under here.

Amateur wheelchair path archaeologists get to work

 searching for not so ancient remains.

A few exploratory hacks later with spades and mattocks and indeed the remnants of a path were visible.

Having discovered the long lost path it was surely time for some lunch to contemplate the significant hard work ahead. Some volunteers sheltered behind natural features and the lime kiln flue whilst others enjoyed the more salubrious, and warmer, environs of the Toft Gate café.

Eureka! Here it is.

After lunch the team soon got into their stride, carefully, but energetically, uncovering the thinnish layer of turf that had built up over the path over the years. Those with spades explored the path edge giving a line for the mattock users to uproot the turf and in some instances generate very large rolls of turf for transportation by wheelbarrow offsite. The transportation team were very helpful in pointing out the weight restrictions of the one wheelbarrow and its associated operatives.

Vanessa tries the pogo stick method of path edging,

while Josh demonstrates how to mattock up a roll of turf.

By 2:15pm, a good portion of the upper path had been revealed and the NCVs headed home discussing the many soothing baths that would be needed that night. Tune in for the results of the second round next week.

Osian

Gradually the line of the path starts to emerge 

and by close of play  a good stretch of the path is laid bare.

• Meanwhile two other NCVs stayed at the barn to sharpen tools all day (although they were spotted out walking a dog during the afternoon - docking of pay is required methinks!) and three more tree planting lovers re-visited the Dacre Banks Nature park during the afternoon to help with the final tree planting session there. They wanted to be in at the end of the marathon task - or perhaps they just wanted some more of Gwen's cake? (Thanks Gwen.)  

An historic moment as Ros K. inserts the last tree 

in the field next to Michael's nature park. 

Ta Daaa!!

• Whilst all of this was going on a select little group of three NCVs stayed at the Council Chambers in Pateley to join in with an interesting training session on 'Heritage Interpretation'. This was led by Lisa Keyes of 'Minerva Heritage' and involved discussion on what is meant by interpretation; what to consider when developing this and different types of interpretive media. It is not just interpretation panels. Oh dear me no. It also involves trails of all kinds, guided walks, events, performance and leaflets to name but a few.

Lisa leads the presentation in the classroom.

We started with a couple of games to help us understand the 

dos and don'ts of interpreting the environment for visitors.
(I was given this photo to describe so the others could imagine what I was looking at. 
I used too much technical language but apparently did the right thing when 
I said that it was the colour of an uncooked chicken.)

After lunch we ventured down the road to Fishpond Wood where we carried out an appraisal of the new interpretation boards there.

 Off to Fishpond Wood to see an example of 
good practice by the entrance...

...and up by the icehouse.

 Both boards explain the heritage well.

As NCVs we normally spend time erecting, rather than designing, interpretation boards. But now we've had the training we may well be able to be involved in the whole process. Lots of help can be found about interpretation via the Association for Heritage Interpretation. Click on this link to access a checklist of all the questions you need to consider when planning Heritage interpretation.
Thanks go to Lisa for a good day's training.

Ros E.