Tour de Pennine way

Blog by Kennedy Page, Community Engagement Trainee

To welcome, familiarise and introduce us to our new traineeship roles, a get together and tour of the North Pennines landscape with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s trainees was arranged to give us an insight into current projects and options for future learning opportunities. Before we embarked on our journey, we were asked to think about three words that we associated with the moorland landscape – mine were: sheep, vast, heather.

Our first stop was Valance Lodge Ridge where we saw a patch of exposed peat land and images of before and after restoration projects. We were given an overview of what the North Pennines National Landscape peat team get involved with and an insight into the process of managing peatland by cutting and relaying the heather as well as the various dam structures to control the flow of water.

From there we stopped by Harwood-in-Teesdale, a fabulous spot for wading birds and species-rich hay meadows. We chatted about the art of haymaking, working together with farmers to conduct meadow surveys, seed-collection events, plant plugging and tree planting. I’m looking forward to being a part of celebrating this at the next Meadows Day festival as I thoroughly enjoyed visiting last year.

Next, we headed over to Cow Green Reservoir, a great spot to admire the alpine landscape. We had the pleasure of spotting the rare and wonderful Spring Gentians, thanks to fellow trainee Ho-Yin’s keen botany eyes.

As we drove from site to site, the team shared their knowledge of the landscape, wildlife and various projects, highlighting the extensive learning opportunities and hands-on experiences this next year would offer us.

Our next stop brought us to Bowlees Visitor Centre, which I am already becoming rather familiar with. I had the pleasure of refreshing the Low Force to High Force waterfall circular and a stop to Gibson’s cave with fellow trainee, Ho-Yin, which celebrates the beauty and wildlife diversity that Teesdale has to offer. At the visitor centre we stopped for lunch, got properly acquainted with one another and spoke with enthusiasm about projects that had already sparked our interest. We visited the plant nursery and farm barn, hearing all about volunteer programmes and the positive impacts that had already taken place.

Finally, we stopped at the diffuse metal sights in Hudeshope valley/Marl Beck to hear about the restoration projects with calaminarian grassland plants and how they would reduce the amount of lead-spoiled water flowing into the River Tees. It was both horrifying to see the huge mounds of lead-filled earth but also inspirational to see improvements already underway.

The tour filled me with ambition and excitement for all that I would learn and experience over the next year, and meeting fellow trainees was a real boost of support for one another. My final three words to describe the North Pennines? “Brimming with life.”