Mend Our Mountains: meet ranger Caroline from Fix the Fells

Mend Our Mountains Articles
27 Awst
8 min read

If you're a BMC member or if you have made a donation to the BMC Access & Conservation Trust (ACT), you are directly supporting our Mend Our Mountains campaign which is funding Fix the Fells again this year. Your contributions enable rangers like Caroline Mercer to consistently repair and manage the Lake District paths that we love to walk on. We caught up with Caroline on a path above Derwent Water, near Keswick, to find out about a typical day in her life - it's pretty hard work!

What does your typical day look like?

We start at 7:00 in the morning, so we're up early to get to base for that time. We have a weekly plan looking at where we're going to work and one of the first things we always do is check the weather forecast. If we're working somewhere quite remote or with lots of becks to cross, if we suddenly get a really heavy rainfall, there's always a risk we could get cut off. Or if wind speeds are too high, we really don't want to be blown around whilst we're trying to move rocks and stones.

If we're working on a long term project, we have all the tools on site, so it's a case of getting into the vehicle, driving where we're going, walking into that work site. We have a quick cup of tea first because sometimes it could take over an hour to walk in. And then we all have our own stretch of pitching or landscaping to do, and it'll be heads down and work followed by the very important lunch time. The length of the afternoon's continued work depends on where we are, our walk out time and travel time, but we aim to get back to base sort of about 4:30 - 4:45pm. Then it's wet gear in the drying room and we all head home for the day.

Caroline on part of the restored path from Ashness Bridge to Falcon Crag

How hard is the work?

You have to be physically fit to be a ranger. The most extreme walks into a work site are probably for an hour, an hour and a half, carrying everything - your shovel, big digging bars and mattocks (and the bars themselves can sometimes weigh five kilograms), plus all your food and your water for the day. Particularly in hot weather, you may need to carry 2-3L of water. And when you get to wherever you're working, again, the work is very physical. We fill one tonne bags of stone to use for pitching. So if you can imagine emptying one of those out before starting work with it, then digging the ground to put the stones in place - it's all nicely physical, with a bit of strength as well.

What about the weather?

You have to be quite resilient to the weather particularly. I know the Lake District is famed for it. It is wet! Sometimes you can go out and there'll be water filling the holes that you've just dug, and you're trying to put the stone in and create a drain or pitching. Meanwhile, your hood's flying off and there's mud dripping everywhere. So that's one side of it. But then again, you end up with days where it's beautiful too, so that balances those out.

And you work as a team?

There's a strong element of teamwork as well. We're a very small team of five in the northern Lakes area and we really do all work together. We spend a lot of time together and we're always keen to help each other out and look at different ways of working as well. As a ranger you have to be quite adaptable.

Your current projects?

So right now we are on a section called Ashness to Falcon Crag. It's a bridleway and it was getting very eroded in terms of the width of it. It was probably up to five - ten metres wide with multiple lines. We were losing lots of vegetation and soil. So by funding our work as Fix the Fells fells, it has enabled us to come along and and stabilise it.

We've worked with the users to look at how they use it, so we don't destroy the pleasure that people have cycling or walking down it. But it enables us to make these paths more sustainable for the future. If this work didn't take place, then we'd probably take quite a number of years and steps backwards and end up with huge gullies in places, like we had here before the work. Some of them were as tall as I am - I'm five foot. You'd lose lots of soil which would then flow into the watercourses and the lakes.

We're also working up at Calf Cove to Esk Hause, re-stabilising the paths and hillside there. Again, a lot of that is about trying to contain the path - the path can be quite peaty and boggy. So we're looking at putting in sustainable path lines and drainage to take the water off and rewet and revegetate areas that have been eroded. So those are two of the projects that the BMC's Access & Conservation Trust Mend Our Mountains funding, thank you very much, is enabling us to continue with.

Insert picture shows the previously eroded, much wider path up from Ashness Bridge

Your favourite project?

Projects like this [at Ashness] where you have suddenly got massive areas that are really eroded and wide, and within a year we've actually managed to revegetate and totally change the size of the path. I think for me, that's one of the things, regardless of what project I'm doing, is how quickly it all blends into the landscape - when you go back and it looks like it's been there for longer than 11 months. Rather than one single project, it's the overall work that we do and results like these.

Biggest challenge?

The most challenging aspect of the job is wanting to get it right; to make sure that the stone work is of high quality, to make the landscaping all blend in, make the paths sustainable and make them suit a variety of users, such as mountain biking communities, people with fell ponies, walkers and runners. So it's basically making the footpaths and bridleways as sustainable and as natural-looking as we can whilst providing a durable, enjoyable pathway for people.

Caroline and team's newly narrowed footpath has revegetated quickly

Why is it important to fund Fix the Fells?

Erosion is being sped up by footfall and climate change. If we leave some areas totally untouched, then we end up with great, big, unsightly scars meters deep, meters wide, which then become exacerbated. Once you lose this soil it's not replaceable - you're down to to bare rock. Whereas if we can step in and control that erosion and help it heal by revegetating it, that's what's important about the work of Fix the Fells - it's stopping that erosion getting to the point of no return.

How can we help?

You can help Fix the Fells out by, wherever possible, using the paths and keeping to them; not dropping any litter and taking any you find home with you, and just getting out enjoying the fells. I would encourage anybody to try volunteering for the BMC Get Stuck In projects in the Lake District or come out on one of the Friends of the Lake District days, where members of the public can sign up for path maintenance days to see what we do. Volunteering in those ways is open to everybody. When we're out in the mountains we get a lot of inquiries about what we're doing and that is absolutely brilliant because we can talk to people about what we do and make the work more widely known. So if you're interested just say, "Hello," and ask us what we're up to.

Say, "Hi!" to Caroline if you see her out landscaping the Lake District paths

WATCH: Fix the Fells ranger Caroline shows us the Mend Our Mountains successes in the Lake District

Support the BMC ACT Mend Our Mountains campaign

Path repair is a surprisingly costly business. Working in remote locations with complex equipment and adverse weather conditions makes rebuilding trails an enormous and expensive challenge.

£5 buys a pair of work gloves

£10 buys a replacement handle for a mattock

£25 buys a shovel or sun cream & midge repellent for a ranger team

£50 buys five garden skips for moving soil

£150 buys protective clothing for path repairers

£250 fixes approximately one metre of footpath

£1000 flies ten bags of stone to an inaccessible mountain location

Support the Mend Our Mountains campaign to help Fix the Fells rangers like Caroline repair and maintain the Lake District fells.

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