Peak District MTB has announced its involvement in the Peak Park Conservation Volunteers ‘Practical Rights of Way Project’, which opens up opportunities for volunteers with groups like PDMTB to contribute to trail maintenance directly.
PDMTB has been working hard to protect the rights of way network in the Peak District from inappropriate maintenance and upgrading work (not sure what we mean by inappropriate? Here’s an example). It also organises dig days, in conjunction with the Peak Park Rangers, but the new initiative allows volunteers to be more directly involved, with fewer administrative hoops to jump through.
So how is this different to simply rocking up to your favourite local bridleway with a spade and getting your dig on? PDMTB says:
“Through this project volunteers will be shown the right methods to safely maintain trails, assess and survey the state of rights of way and propose future rights of way that require work. This will be ongoing volunteer work and volunteers will be the eyes, ears and hands on specific rights of way, regularly reporting back to the rights of way team at the Peak District National Park.
Even better we will also have the benefit of being able to call in the wider Peak Park Conservation Volunteers, who are mainly school groups in the Peak District for the weekend. This could be fantastic for larger jobs requiring greater manpower and materials.”
Sounds like an excellent idea, and one we hope takes off nationally as well as in the Peak District.
The pilot project is running over the summer and autumn, so if you’re Peak-local (or Peak-interested) then head over to the PDMTB page, read up, join up, and get involved.
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Yay! Good work
All sounds good, especially in light of the ‘improvements’ on Rushup Edge but aren’t bridleways etc supposed to be maintained by public bodies? Won’t people be put out of work if there’s all these unpaid volunteers?