Five enthusiastic MNTVers made the journey to Hardcastle Crags today to meet Ranger James with his terrier Hamish, and Hardcastle Crags volunteer Lorna. Due to the distance travelled (it took just over an hour to get there on a quiet Sunday morning) four of us car shared from Quarry Bank Mill to cut down on the number of cars used.
Once there, we walked from the car park at Hollin Hall, down the track to the water works building, through a field at the side where wild ponies had recently been moved into, across a walking track and into another field. This was where we were working for the day.
There had been a lot of bracken in this field originally, and on previous visits years ago we had helped remove some so it was now a lot clearer. Today we were continuing that work by manually pulling out the bracken and, once we had a big pile of it, we would carry it to the edge of the field and stack it up over the fence line but without it over-spilling onto a track that the public used, so it could rot down over time.
It was a nice day, dry, sunny, sometimes cloudy and occasionally a wind would get up.
We were pleased with the amount of bracken we pulled up and hoped that by varying whether we did it standing and bending over, sitting or kneeling, we wouldn't end up with stiff backs tomorrow!
It was nice to meet up with Ranger James again, and also Lorna, whom we'd met on a previous visit to the site when we were tidying up the wood in the wood store and the compound near Gibson Mill. On that visit on 7th April we came across a hedgehog hiding under some fallen leaves.
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