North York Moors National Park, 7-9th November 2008
For this residential task, 8 intrepid volunteers set off on Friday night
heading for Helmsley on the southern edge of the North York Moor National
Park. From there it was another 9 miles drive down dark country lanes
into Bransdale and across fields to Bransdale Mill owned by the National
Trust.
The Mill comprised two dorms, a large kitchen, a living room with an open
range fire and a separate dining area. The toilet facilities were
across the yard, not ideal for a night time visit in the pouring rain! There
were several other rooms and separate buildings that are slowly being
restored by the Trust. The dilapidated water wheel was still in place in an
adjacent room. It was basic, but warm and cosy.
On Saturday, the warden Bill, arrived to take us to the work site in the
minibus. This was really only in the adjacent dale, but required an
hours drive, past Rievaulx abbey and down into Cadell and the worksite near
another mill, Caydale Mill. The work was on the steep sided slopes of the
dale, clearing hawthorn scrub to open up the area for wild flowers,
particularly the Primroses and Cowslips that the Duke of Burgundy butterfly
likes to eat.
The weather on the Saturday was dry but cold and a little overcast and we
soon got a good fire going to keep us warm. There was plenty of scrub
to clear and the distances to the fire increased as we spread out from the
fire site. We managed to clear a good sized area before we finished
for the day.
Then it was back to Bransdale and an evening by the fire (with wood
collected from our worksite). Nick prepared an excellent vegetable
stew with dumplings and Nicola made a tasty apple crumbled with stewed
apples kindly supplied by Sara.
The next day it was back to the same site,
but we decided to
pack up and drive over to Sutton Bank where we met Bill again to bus us to
the site. The weather started off good, after a night of torrential
rain and we rekindled the fire and set about the scrub clearing again.
Unfortunately, the next area was on an even steeper slope which soon became
muddy and treacherous after lunch as the rain began again. We decide
to call it a day by about 2.30 as the rain fell harder. We managed to
grab a coffee and cake from the Park visitors centre before they chucked us
out and we headed back down south. All in all an enjoyable weekends work
with good accommodation and great company.
Julian
(More pictures on the Picasa website)
