05 Dec Volunteering, the story so far

Thank you to all our wonderful volunteers

Since we started the main delivery of The Mountains & The People project in April this year, volunteers have played a massive role in the work we have done. Volunteers have come from far and wide to help conserve the natural heritage of Scotland’s National Parks and we’ve managed to achieve some great things.

250 volunteer days

1500 hours

34 different volunteer tasks

£16,000 value added to the project

There have been plenty of opportunities to get involved with at least one volunteer task in each National Park each month. These regular activities allow anyone to book a space and come and join us for the day. This means we’ve had people from all walks of life and from all over the world get involved. We’ve also been joined by people from Lloyds Bank and Scottish Water as part of their annual volunteer days.

Some of the highlights included:

Walking the whole Meall a’Bhuachaille hill path in the Glenmore Forest, clearing all the drains and ditches on the way. It was the first big hill one of our volunteers had climbed, pretty good going, especially on one of the hottest days of the year!

Clearing all the drains and ditches on the Ben A’an hill path in the Trossachs. The pouring rain, low cloud and midges didn’t stop the group from reaching the top and making a big difference to the path.

Rebuilding a section of the Loch Muick path that had been washed out. This meant rebuilding a water bar to drain the water from the path and then a series of steps or anchor bars to keep the material in place. Most of the volunteers were new to path building and got a real sense of achievement.

As well as the regular volunteer tasks we have worked with a number of organisations and groups to undertake some conservation tasks. Venture Scotland brought a group to help maintain the Conic Hill path, this was part of their John Muir Award; Boots and Beards visited Inchcailloch and cleared a section of path that had become overgrown; Braemar Outdoor Group came out in force to learn how to do basic maintenance on one of the local paths, they are now going out on a regular basis themselves to continue the work with the skills they learnt; West Dunbartonshire Council Youth Horizons group spent a day helping our trainees to rebuild a section of the West Highland Way.

We also worked with two local high schools who were taking part in the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park Junior Ranger scheme. A group of young people from McLaren High school cleared all the cross drains on the lower section of the Ben Ledi hill path, and the group from Balfron High school did the same on Conic Hill.

It’s been a great first year and we can’t wait to meet more people and visit more sites across our National Parks throughout the rest of the project.

Next year we will have plenty more chances to get involved. Sign up to our mailing list to be kept up to date. For more information on volunteering with the project go to our volunteering pages.