Malham Tarn |
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| Location Map |
Working Holiday Details
Malham Tarn |
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| Location Map |
Date: 5th - 7th July 2002 |
| Location: Malham Tarn, Yorkshire Dales |
| Basecamp: Airton Hostel - Airton Village |
| The volunteers present: | National Trust | |
Liz Sarah Yvonne |
Owen (Leader) Barry David Kerry |
Tony (Malham Tarn Warden) Roger |
The basecamp for this weekend had been changed from Towhead Barn to Airton Hostel, so we actually stayed much closer to Malham Tarn than originally planned. The village of Airton is very pleasant but has no facilities, such as shops or pubs.
| Tasks undertaken. | |
| The wetland areas around Malham Tarn are
of great scientific interest, although obviously they are not easy to access. In order for people to move across and study the wetland areas a boardwalk has been constructed. The old two foot wide boardwalk is slowly sinking and also is now considered not to meet the requirements of the National Trust "Easy Access" policy. |
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Some of the boardwalk had already been replaced and our task for the
weekend was to start replacing a different section, with new four foot wide boards. The section we worked on went past a deep pond and so we had to be careful not to step into this as it was difficult to see the pond edge through the vegetation. |
| The old boardwalk had to be completely removed, which was a very wet
and messy job. Even though some of this wood had been in place for fifteen years a lot of it was still in good condition and could be used for repair work on other parts of the estate. |
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Large half-tree trunk sections were laid down as the base for the
boardwalk, onto which were placed runners, and the boards then nailed on the top. There was a lot of carrying, as all of the new wood had to be carried about 200m to the site and all of the old wood had to be carried away. |
| The warden had asked us to replace 25m of the boardwalk over the
weekend, but in the end we managed to achieve a grand total of 36m, which we felt was
quite an achievement. This was a total of 218 boards. As each board was secured with five nails, this meant we used a total of 1090 nails (plus a few bent ones) which did seem an awful lot of hammering. |
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The work did produce a few blisters and a lot of wet feet, but we did
feel that we had achieved something very positive. After admiring our completed work we returned to the workshop area to remove all of the nails from the old boards and stack them in the wood store for future use. |
| At the end of the first days work Tony, the warden, took us for a walk
around the whole length of the boardwalk (about one hour) and his knowledge and enthusiasm
for the site was very impressive. Also on the way back to the basecamp he also drove us around to see a lot more of the estate which really was a great bonus for the weekend. |
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There was a terrific team spirit at the basecamp and even though there
was only seven of us, all of the jobs seem to be completely very easily and quickly. In the evenings we took the twenty minute walk to the Victoria Inn at nearby Kirkby Malham, which is a very pleasant and friendly pub. |
The whole weekend was very enjoyable. This area of the Yorkshire Dales is stunningly beautiful and the Malham Tarn estate is highly significant, both for its beauty and the scientific importance of the area. The new boardwalk that we replaced should last at least 15 years, so we felt we had completed a task that is going to benefit people for quite a few years.
