Everyone was busy talking but new arrivals were welcomed and offered coffee and biscuits – volunteers always seem happy to make room for someone else and include them in conversations but, after all, everyone is there for the same reason – to make Shropshire a better place to live, work, walk, ride – and dream.
Volunteers do many different things – maintaining footpaths and bridleways, clearing brambles, leading walks, guiding tours, chairing groups like Oswestry Ramblers , organising Whitchurch Walking Festival, butterfly surveys, water vole habitat surveys – and you don’t have to know how to do these things – you just join in and help with what you enjoy doing – and learn on the job.
Likewise Shropshire Council’s Outdoor Recreation Team does many different things, not least communicating and working together with all the other countryside organisations, Shropshire Wildlife Trust, RSPB, Butterfly Conservation Trust, Waterways Trust, working with parish councils, community groups, providing practical advice to farmers and landowners, linking reserves that are becoming isolated.
It also includes encouraging the public to enjoy our countryside – cycling, canoeing, sailing and fishing as well as bird-watching, walking and riding. Luke Neal, Community Officer with the Meres and Mosses Landscape Partnership Scheme describes it as: “Explaining, exploring, accessing and preserving the countryside.”
Whixall, Fenns and Bettisfield Mosses form the largest peat body in the UK. Peat is 30 times better at storing carbon than trees and acts like a sponge, swelling up and soaking up water and storing it. Our meres and mosses landscape dates back to the Pleistocene – the last ice age when glaciers melted and left an undulating landscape with many hollows that filled with water creating the meres. Over time some of these lakes started to fill in with vegetation which decomposed to create peat. It takes about 100 years to make a peat moss 5 cm deep.
After coffee David Hardwick led a guided walk from the Boathouse along the Mere past marshland that had been cleared to provide better habitat – trees pollarded to let in more light which was enjoyed by the marsh marigolds flourishing there. After a brief visit to Blake Mere the walk followed the Shropshire Union Canal, through the only canal tunnel in Shropshire.
Leaving the canal the walk followed a footpath through a wood dotted with bluebells and arum lillies to the top of the hill where there was a panoramic view of the Mere and the path back down to the Boathouse – and lunch.
Some of the volunteers received long service awards at a special presentation in the afternoon. Many volunteers became involved by accident – as Roy Arnold, founder member of Shifnal Pathfinders said: “I was asked to help clear a bridle path.” That was many years ago and Roy was presented with a well-earned long service award for all the volunteer hours spent clearing rights of way and all the other activities that became part of his life simply because they needed doing.
Don Bannister earned his long service award for repairing and monitoring over 200 nest boxes in Severn Valley Country Park.
David Farncombe is a leader of ‘Mere Ambles’, part of the Walking for Health scheme and Chairman of the Ellesmere branch of the Shropshire Wildlife Trust. He also belongs to the ‘Friends of the Mere’; he lives in Ellesmere and helps with conservation work around the Mere. He said: “Birds are my particular interest. I did a dawn chorus walk for Luke at Colemere starting at five o’clock in the morning. It’s magical, sitting in the dark, then dawn begins to creep up and you hear a pheasant cry, then a blackbird starts singing – magical liquid notes, then all the other birds gradually join in. I’ve been here for 20 years and grown to love the area, I want to make sure it stays like it.”
Dick Davis is a ‘Walking for Health’ leader in Oswestry. “I’m enjoying the walking, along the canals, I’ll soon be living on a narrow boat at Whixall so I’m looking forward to walking my dog around Whixall Moss.”
Martin Spenser belongs to the Friends of the Mere at Ellesmere. “I’m a retired volunteer sucker!” he said, “I got roped in – but I’m getting more and more interested in the wildlife and I enjoy the exercise. I was really surprised at the number of people here – let’s hope we can all spread the voluntary message and encourage more people to get involved.”
Trevor Johnson is a volunteer site ranger at Rectory Wood & Field in Church Stretton. He said: I came along as I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet people – talk to other volunteers about what they do. It’s also encouraging to see that it is appreciated and the Council and Shropshire Wildlife Trust do recognise the amount of work we do.”
If you would like to find out more – get involved – learn about your local countryside – make friends – join Walking for Health – carry out some habitat surveys (training provided), learn some new skills – try your hand at sailing, canoeing or fishing – you can contact:
David Hardwick, Countryside Recreation Officer, Outdoor Recreation Team, Shropshire Council
Tel 01743 791984 David.Hardwick@shropshire.gov.uk
Luke Neal, Community Officer, Meres and Mosses Landscape Partnership Scheme
Tel 01743 284275 luken@ShropshireWildlifeTrust.org.uk
Or visit: www.themeresandmosses.co.uk
– Words and pictures by Barbara Rainford, Strawberry Fields
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