High Wray (Windermere) Weekend 3 Dec 2011

A large group of us celebrated early at High Wray for the weekend. To subsidise the base camp hire most of us worked on for the day, helping the staff "Rangers" as we now must call them to finish some work on a stretch of bridle path alongside the lake.


We started in full waterproofs in the rain at the end of the path near the gate to Wray Castle, and helped load a trailer with fire wood - as this was the fuel that was most likely to disappear. We then walked down to the lake shore inspected the "finished" work, before continuing the work ourselves. The task was simple but did required thought - cut down the "trees" on the sides of the path with pink spots - to open out the views and keep the path clear. The complex bit came next - as you then had to decide what to do with the cut material - cut it to one length for firewood, a different length for a hedging stakes, leave it as long as possible as material for "round wood crafts" (hurdle making etc) - or just burn it on the bonfire!

The sun never got very high of the hill, but the hill was sheltering us from the worst of the weather. We did see quite a lot of rain and some hail. The light was going by the time we finished but I thing the rangers were quite pleased that we had finished the section.