Volunteers Rock!

The Southern footpath team have been preparing for a job, a stone pitched path between Grisdale tarn and Fairfield.  They will be joined later in the year by the other three footpath teams to get it boshed!  The first job was finding a suitable scree to take stone from, one that is not a SSSI  (site of special scientific interest)  with good rock and no endangered flora.  Here's a couple of protected flora you may of seen about on the cumbrian fells.

Parsley fern

woolly hair moss

The scree needs to be as close as possible to the work site to help reduce flight costs and ensure the path blends in with the surrounding rock.  With the site found the team started filling reinforced bags to be flown by helicopter onto the work site.  There was 160 bags to fill so they needed to get cracking despite the snow making it difficult to find any stone.

With 120 bags filled and the Heli lift only a week away, 11 of the fix the fells volunteers came in on a Saturday to give a helping hand.

The first bags of the day, each bag holds a tonne!

We got lucky with the weather and it turned into a cracking day, the sun cream even came out.

By the time the last bags were filled we could of done with a nice cream tea from Wordsworth house and gardens.  Below is a short time lapse of Watendlath bridge and Langstrath beck around the time the team started filling bags, also the volunteers bag filling a couple of weeks later  (shot from too far away! but if you look closely at the screes you will see the busy fix the fells worker bee's).

Music by Kevin MacLeod 

At the end of the Day having a well deserved rest after filling 40 bags of stone, Rock on!

Photos by David Brooks