Wednesday 7 November 2012

I'm a TVAONBVTW!

And that stands for Tamar Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Volunteer Trail Warden.  Sounds impressive, eh? But what does it entail?

I (plus my IWC) get to look after a section of the Tamar Valley Trail near us and make certain that it's fit for walkers - clearing fallen branches and overgrown paths, making them safe for users. We are not aiming for anything too pristine, after all the Trail is supposed to be a walk in the countryside, but we are aiming to remove any obvious hazards. Our stretch (Kit Hill to Luckett to Horsebridge) is about 7 miles long and we'll be aiming to walk it at least once a month. Hopefully, it will act as a motivator to get us out more. Ah, almost forgot to mention that we have to make sure that walkers can actually follow the Trail. The present signage is ambiguous in parts and we'll be pinning up markers (as per the little green one at the bottom of the post on the left) as and where we think there's a problem.

Yesterday I attended a 'training' session centred on Bere Alston. This was, in all essentials, a walk in the woods with a pair of secateurs (and an unfriendly dog that I was tempted to emasculate with my secateurs). The weather was dry and clear and the walk took me to parts of the Bere Peninsular I'd never visited before. Well worth a repeat visit sometime soon to enjoy the views of the river and Calstock viaduct through the leafless trees.

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