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Blood, soil, sweat and tears...

A review of 'Mending our Ways'

I always wanted to work in the outdoors. For ten years realised this ambition, employed on the National Trust's path repair teams at Langdale and Grasmere in the Lake District.

My vision of a lifetime of glorious sunny days spent out on the fells soon met with reality. Path repair is a very demanding way to earn a living. Ten-hour days. Walk up the fell; put in a full day's work, and walk down again. Same thing tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow ........ And all this for ten grand a year. However, in the end it was the climate that defeated me and I headed for the warmth of Africa for a few years.

I recently returned to Cumbria to find an invitation from the British Upland Footpath Trust to attend the launch of their new publication 'Mending our Ways' at the Old Dungeon Ghyll in Langdale.

The prospect of lunch at one of the Lake District's best pubs was too good to miss, so on a sunny September morning I joined the multitude at the Old D.G. And here was a surprise - not just the usual gaggle of frost-bitten pathworkers, but also an assortment of managers and policy people talking about funding and strategy. No chance for a good gossip here, so I arranged to meet up with my old colleagues working on The Band, high up the Langdale Valley some days later.

The Band is probably the worst erosion problem in Cumbria, and a mammoth undertaking. Four kilometres of badly eroded path which, the National Trust anticipates, will take two to three years to complete. But statistics don't show the scale of the task. You have to walk up it to appreciate what the teams have ahead of them.

Leaving the Old D.G. behind I walked through Stool End Farm and up the fell.

Walking on the new path I was struck by the thought that I hadn't seen pitching this good for quite a while. It was quality stuff. Large stones; a level, solid surface; drainage had been a major concern - well planned and built to last. Eventually I made it to the last pull up to Three Tarns, where I heard the grunts, groans and muttered cries of "bugger" that signal the presence of a footpath team at work.

By happy chance I arrived at lunch time and joined the team for a brew. We had met briefly at the BUFT get together and I asked their opinion of the Mending our Ways book. There was unanimous approval. At last someone had stated in black and white what we knew all along - that pathwork requires not just skill, but also proper resourcing and planning if those paths are to be built to last.

Over recent years BUFT has been striving to bring together pathworkers to determine what makes a really good.

We are agreed on many of the techniques, and there are some very skilled workers out there who really know their craft. However, there are still to many examples of truly awful work.

What Mending our Ways emphasises is that good pathwork is achieved at two levels.

First, you need your skilled workers who know techniques and also how to landscape a path. And secondly, you need to give them the resources to do the job. Good pathwork doesn't come cheap, but one thing is for certain - a well planned, quality path will last you a lot longer and ultimately provide better value for money. 'Mending our Ways' illustrates how this can be achieved.

I set off back down to the Old DG, skidding on the worst eroded sections of The Band. Looking back up the hill, the ugly scar of the Band stood out like a gash across the landscape. That was when the other big message in 'Mending our Ways' really struck me. Good management should aim to prevent paths from getting into such a dreadful state, through maintenance and pre-emptive work, rather than allowing them to erode to the state where they are a blot on the landscape, impossible to walk on and a massive task to repair.

I glanced across the valley to Redacre Gill. That had once been a scar, like The Band, but following restoration (funded by BUFT and the National Trust), it is now scarcely possible to make out its line running up to Pike O' Blisco.

This, then, was what the meeting at the Old D.G. was all about. BUFT's mission is to get the message across to land managers and funding bodies that they must give the footpath restoration teams the backing and resources they need. Good luck to BUFT. This will be a difficult path to follow, and it is long overdue that someone went down it.

Copies of Mending our Ways are available from:

BUFT,
PO Box 96,
Manchester M20 2FU.
Tel: 0161 445 4747
Fax 0161 445 4500.

Click here to see an abstract of 'Mending our Ways'

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