On Sunday 12th October a small group of us made the journey up to Marsden Moor. The task was heather seed spreading on Holme Moor, the rangers also invited members of the public to join in and we were joined by a lovely gentleman who volunteers at the rangers plant nursery.
We met the ranger at the bandstand in Marsden Moor and then walked up to the site (approx 45 mins), it was a lovely sunny day and quite warm for the time of year so we had a quick tea break before getting to work. The task was done by hand and we had to scatter the seeds in between the clumps of purple moor grass (tussocks), to do this we had to scarify the soil to reveal the peat below.
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| View from top of the moor |
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| Work area containing Tussocks grass |
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| Bag of seeds |
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| Working away |
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| Seed spreading |
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| End of Day group photo |
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| The catch water drains |
We finished quite early and made our way back down to Marsden Village and some of us decided to stay on for a drink as there was a jazz festival on. This was my first visit to Marsden Moor and it certainly won't be my last, the village is lovely and the scenery is amazing.
Denise Clark
Worksite Leader
Today's rhodybash in the High Peak on Park Hall Moor was cancelled because fewer than five people (the minimum number stipulated by ranger Chris Lockyer) had signed up. That's obviously a shame, but with Storm Amy blowing in perhaps no surprise.
Hopefully we will have sufficient numbers for our next visit to the High Peak on 9th November to go ahead.
Daniel
It was lovely to meet up with several members of MNTV where we welcomed two new members on a lovely autumn day. We walked along the track from the rangers yard with two wheelbarrows full of tools, tree poppers, saws, loppers, etc. We unlocked the gate to the Engine Vein mine entrance and went through locking the gate behind us just in case the public decided to follow. One of the fun bits for me of volunteering with MNTV is getting to go places the public don’t have access to.
The task was to remove vegetation, mainly birch trees, from the rocks above the mine to prevent the roots damaging the mine.
We set to work. Any trees that we couldn’t get out with the specialist tree poppers we removed the tops and left a stump so it could be winched out later.
We found some lovely examples of Amanita muscaria mushrooms amongst the saplings – they look just like the mushrooms in children’s story books:
The second task was to use the saplings we were removing to create a basket weave fence around the area.
This will help keep people out and disguise the metal stock fencing.
We worked all day but found time to eat cake and chat.
By the end we had cleared a lot of the birch saplings off the rocks and had had fun “basket” weaving the brash into the fence:
Once we had collected all the tools we went to look at the mine entrance which is hidden in the rocks unusually above the gully. The door is an old bank vault door.
We walked back to the cars tired but satisfied that we had done a good job in good company.
Jenny
Seven MNTV-ers met Rangers Chris and Jason in the main car park at Lyme Park on a cool but dry morning (a huge difference to the deluge of rain that fell yesterday!!).
Four of us joined Bree and Jess for a day at the seaside. The original job planned for today had to be changed due to machinery malfunction, but they had some good alternatives for us to get stuck into.
The first job involved a fire - eat your heart out Neil, Andy & Jack! There were large piles of brash and cuttings plus loads and loads of chestnut fencing that had all been removed when dismantling Victoria Road car park. Our aim was to get this done before the rain started at lunchtime. Talk about precision work - as the last lot was put on the fire the first spots of rain started to fall!
The second job was to complete a wall of double/triple layers of fence posts. This is to replace fallen down fencing which was to separate different size stones for the paths.
Finally, we dismantled, de-nailed and cleared timber from the yard and stacked it in a massive skip. Again a lot of this had come from Victoria Road.
As far as the new car park is concerned, it is well under way and surprisingly is ahead of schedule with it hoping to be complete for next spring.
Bree and Jess were more than happy with what had been achieved, as these were jobs that kept being put on the back burner for more pressing jobs.
Thanks to my colleagues for their hard work and good company.
Christine
On Sunday 7th September we had our first combined social event and workday. We were due to work at Chirk but due to low volunteer numbers the workday was cancelled and we instead had a last minute change of plan...
During the morning we had a tour of Wood Mine which was a guided tour conducted by the Derbyshire Caving Club as part of their open weekend. Four of us attended the tour and had an amazing morning learning about the history of the mine and touring the underground tunnels and chambers. Please see a selection of photos from the mine below.
After exiting the mine we encountered torrential rain so had a very wet walk back to the rangers yard to contemplate whether or not we could go ahead with the afternoon workday task of putting up bird boxes. There were only three volunteers for the afernoon session but due to the nature of the task it was easily completed with such a small group.
After a short lunch break the rain stopped and we managed to get out in the woodland to put up bird boxes, it's the first time I have used a drill on a workday and we discovered that silver birch are the best trees to drill into!
We all had a lovely day. We plan to organise another mine tour social in Spring 2026. There are plenty more bird boxes to put up in future workdays.
Denise Clark
Worksite/Social leader
