All Change at Moor House - Upper Teesdale

There have been recent changes in staffing at Moor House –Upper Teesdale NNR over the recent months; you may already know that Chris and Heather McCarty both retired at the end of September after over 30 plus years of service between them. 



Emma King has successfully completed her Natural England HLF traineeship and gained accreditation in Environmental Conservation from Warwickshire College. Her hard work and commitment has been recognised and she has been employed on a short term appointment as a Reserve Warden working at both Teesmouth and Moor House-Upper Teesdale NNRs where her duties include outreach, education, volunteer management and general estate duties as well as continuing to learn about the respective NNRs' natural history and their required management.

 

 

There’s also a new face around - Phil Swaile - who is on part time loan at present from the Newcastle Office.  His help is much needed and appreciated for day to day running of the NNR and estate tasks.

 

Martin Furness

I was until recently on temporary promotion as Senior Reserve Manager, but now I have been successful in securing the role full time.  This is a great opportunity and it is also a great responsibility to manage one of the UK's best botanical and upland NNRs, along with continuing to manage the other fantastic North Pennine NNRs of Muckle Moss, and Derwent Gorge and Muggleswick Woods.

The job of Senior Site Manager is the job I’ve wanted to do since I was at school, not just managing an NNR, but specifically managing Moor House.  Way back in the late 1970’s a family friend, Jim Parkin, was the Nature Conservancy Council Warden for Moor House and actually lived in the Warden’s house there.  So once or twice a year my family and I had trip up Moor House. It seemed to take ages from Appleby in our Austin 1100 crawling up Hartside Pass eventually getting to Garrigill and then an even slower crawl along the rough track eventually getting to Moor House itself.

It was a great place.  Jim had two daughters, younger than me and my brother, who would take us off to explore the mini limestone gorges of Rough Sike and Moss Burn.  We even swam in them.  We must have been a bit harder them days.

Jim would show us mist netting birds; some of the special plants; how he recorded the weather data;  and many other things.  He was a real inspiration to me.

In those days there were some more unusual additions to the staff at Moor House - Mick the pointer dog for work on grouse, and Betty the fell pony to transport materials around the NNR.  There were no quad bikes then.  It was a busy place with all research being undertaken and the field lab full of people in white lab coats.

Jim eventually moved on to manage other NNRs, but his knowledge and enthusiasm inspired and stayed with me - this was what I wanted to do!

My enjoyment and learning of natural history continued through living and playing in the countryside around Appleby, but by the time I was 16 mopeds and the usual things that young lads get up to took my interest.  The careers advisor never quite got what I meant by conservation work and managing nature reserves, so I left school at 16 to do a 6 month YT Scheme working on HGVs and then drifted into the local manufacturing firms in the early days of  electronics industry, but I was still out and about in the countryside and local fells learning about natural history.

Eventually in 1992 I was made redundant and it was time for a change of direction to what I really wanted to do. I contacted Terry Wells, the then Warden at Moor House, to do voluntary work and enrolled  onto a National Diploma in Land Use and Recreation, a brilliant vocational course with three northern colleges -  Newton Rigg, Kirkley Hall and Houghall Colleges, all specializing in agriculture, forestry and other land based industries.   Students spent each term at a different college, including a 6 month placement, over the three years of the course.  You got a real grounding in conservation, recreation, and practical land management over the whole of the north of England.

This had fired my interest for further study and I got a place at Edge Hill University to undertake a BSc in Field Biology and Habitat Management.  Again I had chosen right, another three years of learning more in-depth ecology, field biology skills and principles of habitat management.  I undertook my dissertation on the macro-invertebrates of three streams on Moor House and finished up with a first class degree.

 

Leaving in May 1998 I spent nearly a year applying for jobs and labouring for a local builder.  I looked forward to Tuesdays after getting home from work for the postal edition of CJS (Countryside Jobs Service) to look and request another job application and spend the other evenings applying for them.  I thought I was not going to get anything, then eventually I got the opportunity to work as a Estate worker for Scottish Natural Heritage at Forvie NNR, about 15 miles north of Aberdeen.  It is a beautiful coastal NNR – extensive coastal heath, with large dune system and the estuary of the river Ythan, where I managed tern and eider duck nesting colonies and undertook estate maintenance duties. It was a short term summer contract of six months, but they managed to find more work for me and a promotion for another year.  Then in the summer of 2000 I saw the advert for a Reserve Manager at Moor House-Upper Teesdale NNR, I couldn’t believe it, so I applied, got an interview and the rest is history and I’ve been here ever since.

Chris and Heather have been constant faces of the NNR and several others have come and gone over the years.  Chris has filled me with his passion and knowledge for the habitats and species of the North Pennines and beyond - and sometimes I still think ‘I’ll just run this past him’, but then remember it’s now me making the decisions which sometimes makes me think for a bit longer.

So there’s me, Emma and Phil at present and I hope that we’ll still do as much as we can for the conservation of the special habitats and unique species on the NNR.  We'll also continue to run the volunteer tasks and events to allow others to appreciate and get involved with what is special about  Moor House - Upper Teesdale NNR and beyond. 

Martin Furness
Senior Reserve Manager 

 

 

Looking back on 2016 – a tribute to our volunteers

 

We've had a very industrious 2016 with our fabulous volunteers who have given much of their time, energy and enthusiasm to help us look after Moor House – Upper Teesdale NNR.  Together we have achieved tremendous results.  Our volunteers bring with them such a vast amount of knowledge, skills, experience and ideas, making them an invaluable resource.  They are also our friends. We wholeheartedly mean it when we say that we couldn't possibly manage the Reserve without them. 

 

 Here's (some of) what we got up to in 2016:

 

We helped North Pennines AONB Partnership with a number of practical jobs around Bowlees Visitor Centre.

 

We cut the rushes on Widdybank Fell, to reduce their vigour and make room from the special plants that grow there.

 

  

 

We assisted with the  rush plots treatment experiment by cutting some of the rush plots with a reciprocating pedestrian mower.

We undertook tree guard maintenance checks to see how our young trees were growing, under Cronkley Scar.

We cut the rushes on Widdybank pasture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We made regular checks of the rabbit proof exclosures on Cronkley Fell that  protect our rare plants.

 

We repaired fence lines at Derwent Gorge to keep the sheep out of our ancient woodland.

 

We tackled an old tree, toppled by the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We litter picked between Low Force and High Force.

 

We repaired more fence lines at Derwent Gorge - including one across the river! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 



We put a new NNR sign at Dufton YHA.
 

We cut back the junipers along the footpath to High Force.

 

 

We rebuilt over 10metres of wall at Moor House.

 

We jointly hosted 'Wild Wedensdays' and  'Bowlees Discovery Club' (our wildlife club for 5-11 year olds) with the North Pennines AONB Partnership. 

 

We delivered our 2016 events programme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About volunteering at Moor House – Upper Teesdale NNR

We have three key groups of volunteers: our weekly practical volunteers, our monthly practical volunteers; and our Green Guides.  The weekly and monthly practical volunteers help us with key estate management and habit management tasks – such as fencing, walling, scrub clearance, rush cutting and tree guard maintenance.  Our Green Guides patrol along the footpath between Low Force and High Force, and also at Cow Green (at weekends during April to October).  They meet and greet the public, provide information, litter pick, and are our eyes and ears about the Reserve.  They also help to deliver our events programme and assist with both school visits and our wildlife club for 5-11 year olds.  We are very flexible with what our volunteers want to do and often there is overlap between the groups.

 

We are also implementing a volunteer gardening rota at Wynch Bridge End Cottage for 2017 and we’ve just embarked on a new garden project, here at Widdybank Farm, our Reserve base.

 

 

Many of our volunteers have been volunteering with us for over 10 years but there is always room for new volunteers!  If you are interested in joining us, please get in touch.  Whatever amount of time you have to spare, be it on a regular basis or just as and when it suits you, your time would be fully utilised and very much appreciated. 

 

 

For more information call the Reserve base on 01833 622374 or email: Emma.King@naturalengland.org.uk

 

 

Emma King

Reserve Warden

 

 

 

 

 

Widdybank Farm - Garden Project

November 18th - a cold, damp, snowy morning, and the intrepid: myself, Lynn and Anne (who now could be called the 'garden design crew') trudged from the Widdybank Farm gate to our Reserve base/office; Widdybank Farm. 

 

Emma (who is Moor House - Upper Teesdale's Reserve Warden, and our boss), suggested we brighten up the front of Widdybank Farm as we get many people passing by on the public footpath that runs through the farm yard, straight past Widdybank Farm.  It is also an opportunity to create a lovely little habitat and invaluable food source for  bumblebees, butterflies and other invertebrates.  

 

And so we developed a plan.

 

There are two big containers that we have suggested could be planted with herbs, marjoram, thyme, sage and a lovely lavender bush.  (The bees and butterflies will be delighted!).  We are hoping that the practical volunteers (are you listening John and Gordon?) will make us two 9-foot planters, to stand free on each side of the front door.  We propose that these are lined with heavy duty polythene, and have 2-foot uprights to which sheep-proof mesh can be secured!  Then a trellis attached to the back of them would persuade some sweet peas to climb and give a beautiful display on those sunny afternoons at Widdybank.

The planters could then be filled with good colourful plants, such as geraniums, marigolds, and antirrhinum - creating a minimal maintenance garden (unlike the Wynch Bridge End Cottage garden).  We also plan to build a bug hotel.  Everyone says this is easy but I know nothing about that sort of construction, so maybe some of our other volunteers will help with that.

 

We also have a good idea for when the garden is established - to consider leaving a full watering can out so that kindly passers-by could give the plants a drop of water over hot weekends, if they looked a little dry.  We could even be cheeky, and leave a trowel out too! You never know, someone might see a couple of weeds and feel the urge to pull them out.

So that's the plan.  We will need some help come March/April (depending on the weather!).  We will also need some plants too - strong ones, not seedlings, so that they have a chance to bloom this next season. Thank you practical volunteers, if you can help!

We ended our visit, eating our sandwiches and having a good old chat, in the warmth of the Widdybank Farm kitchen with Emma and Martin (the Senior Reserve Manager), who made us a lovely cup of coffee and shared their biscuits with us.

Watch this space for updates on the progress of the garden.

Jo Hayes - Volunteer

Anne, myself and Lynn

 

 

 

Rough Sike Wall

This is a tale about a wall, mist and mizzle, midges, mud, and midsummer  sun.  It's set at Moor House, seven miles out of Garrigill in South Tynedale, at 1800 feet.  It is remote,  taking up to an hour to get to from the NNR base at Widdybank in Teesdale.

Walls fall down for lots of reasons; this one had collapsed because the ground  had given way.  

Built of limestone onto a limestone substrate you'd think this would be a sound base to build on, but limestone weathers and dissolves.  Sometime in the past part of the side of the gorge had dropped out, the big slabs of rock now at the bottom lining the  bank of Rough Sike.  Trickling water, the action of frost, and gravity had left an unstable edge, with the ground on the field side higher than that on the stream side, which drops steeply to the water.  The line of the wall would have to be moved into the field.

You look at the stone as you strip out the wall:  big pieces of limestone, weirdly eroded shapes, smooth and hard slabs, jagged and angular stuff, blocks which fall apart in your hands as you lift them, lots of small contorted pieces which you might stretch definition to describe as 'flat' - ish.  They are full of fossils from the Carboniferous deltas and seas, crinoids and corals, curved wisps of brachiopods, all kinds of squiggles, pale traces of their origin.

Five pairs of hands - Pete, Carl, Gordon, John, and Emma our NNR Trainee ­­- shift the tumble down wall into a pile of stone roughly sorted into facings, hearting and throughstones.  I drop down slope on the Sike side to throw up the stone scattered down the bank and in the gorge, a slow, energetic task.  The big stuff - mainly throughs (or 'thruffs' as they are known locally) and foundation stones -  have to be rolled up and heaved over the line of the wall onto the parallel stone pile expanding rapidly within the field.  Anything big and knobbly is put aside as potential copes, or capping stones, which are just weights to compress and hold together the carefully placed stones beneath .  The prospect is interesting - one enormous mound of material and a straggly line of foundation stones, all tilted (some outwards, some inwards, but none level), and in places seemingly none at all, just a jumble of soil and small stone. 

The first day.  Pete and I stand looking at the big gap, with its erupted, impacted teeth sticking out of the ground.  It's all a bit daunting.  We've brought a mattock, a spade, a pinch bar, a lump hammer, a walling hammer, two batter frames, a line level, and a ball of string.  We eye the line of the wall about two feet in from its original position and set up our strings.  And starting at the lower end, we dig and scrape. 

Out comes  an assortment of stone,  some big founds  and a lot of dross along with a deep brown damp soil.

 

On the field side, because the ground is so soft and uneven, we go down more than the usual six inches for the foundation trench, sometimes as much as a foot, so we end up with a sizeable excavation.  Into this we lay the first big stones, and as we work uphill we step them, the one above lipping over the one below,  packing big hearting tightly into the space left between the two rows, though most are touching back to back.

 

An occasional monster is left in place, perhaps nudged slightly into line with the heavy bar.  Halfway up the slope we dig quickly to the bedrock, and use some well positioned jutting outcrops for our next steps.  Getting the footings right is the first key to the strength of the wall, and makes subsequent building easier (that's the theory anyway).  It eventually takes the two of us three days to set these steps in place.  It's going to be a slow wall.

On to these steps we build the first courses. Pete works on the inside (field side) and I work on a thin strip on the Sike side.  All the stone for this outer face has to be brought over from the pile in the field.   The idea is to work up the slope using the levelled strings and the batter frames (which give a truncated A shape to the wall in cross section) to guide the placing of the stone.  At any one time the top of the wall down slope will level into the foundation of the wall several feet up slope.  You hop up bit by bit.  The stones are placed tight, length in, carefully chocked, and well packed with hearting - the heart of the wall is just that, as key to its strength as well set foundations.

 

To get the wall rising we have a day of many hands and it's cool, breezy, grey; the beginning of July.

 

 

 

 

Then Pete and I crack on in days of sun and mist and midges.  We lose ourselves in the task, time passes quickly, the wall emerges, shuffling slowly uphill.

It is lunchtime.  We sit across the water for our sandwiches, resting on a soft grassy bank looking back towards our nascent wall. 

Cut back into the bank we are sitting on, is a very small quarry, grassed over, but still with some big blocks of stone evident in a jumbled pile, and a scatter of shims half grassed over.  This is probably the source of the stone for the wall, which, if right, is odd.  It would mean that the quarried stone had been carried over  the water and up the bank on the other side.  An unusual, labour intense way of getting stone to the wall.  Usually the source is uphill from where the wall is to be; it's a lot easier to bring stone down than to take it up.  But here the obvious place where stone could be got was by working into the side of the gorge where it began to open out. 

 

The July sun stretches into August and is hot, warming the rising wall and the reducing stone heap. 

 

Some days there's a breeze, on others it's stiflingly calm.  Midges ignore the general rule and rise in sun and wind and rain.  Chemical repellent is sloshed on to little effect.  Nothing can be done when there are tens of little tickling bites on face and neck and arms as you carefully pick your way across the slope with a big stone clamped to your belly. 

 

There are days of mist and mizzle when we don't see much, and hear only our own working. 

A hammer is used hardly at all, but when I need to knock off a knuckle ('knapping') to fit a stone tightly with its neighbours, it's the smell as much as the sound that I notice.  The sound can be a dull, solid clunk or an ear-piercing ring, as if striking metal.  The smell is of rotting vegetation;  equatorial swamp immediately hits your nose.  We are sweaty or cold, or both at once.  

 

And when it rains it's wellies and waterproofs - and mud, glorious mud!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The wall creeps up the slope, some days just one of us building, sometimes two.  Gordon becomes a nimble collector and packer of hearting. 

 

 

 

 

At about knee height the first course of thruffs goes in, binding the two faces of the wall below and providing a solid base for the second rise of the wall.  Some of these through stones are monstrous pieces, sculpted on one side, more level on the other, so are probably the tops of clints that have been scalped.  A wall end or cheek is built at both the top and bottom - at the bottom to hold the wall over the winter above the gap we'll leave until next year,  when the next higgledy section of wall is taken down and rebuilt.

At the top, the cheek will prevent the rebuilt wall from being torn out by the inevitable collapse of the ragged, folded-in pile of stones just above it.

We notice the birds.  On the way in, kestrels and a merlin plus there's usually a wheatear bobbing around just below us on the flat ground where Rough Sike flows into Moss Burn.  A wren flits through the gaps in the stones of the old wall. The pink of the thyme which grows in profusion along the trackside becomes patchy, but the heather purples up, just as the deep red of the cotton grass begins to glow.  Wavy-in-the-breeze grass heads  turn light brown, buff, set against the vivid greens of rushes and mosses.  Nearly all the meadow flowers have set their seed, so now it's the bright green of alchemilla leaves that catch the eye.  What we look at when we lift our heads from the wall is a soft palette of moorland colours.

The work is intermittent, a day or two days (half days, really) a week over summer and into autumn, but suddenly the gap at the upper end  is about to close, with the top of the wall easing up on a second layer of throughs giving a gentle line to catch the slope.

 

 

Finally, the copes go on, packed and wedged to hold everything together.

It's the final test of the waller's arms and back, to get these weights on!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so it's done, until the next bit of wall falls out.  Just over ten metres rebuilt in twelve half days - a slow wall.  

 

All that remains is to clear the unused stone down to a pile where the gap remains at the bottom - to be built up next year.  And as it was in the beginning - misty, wet - so it is at the end, the rain just starting as we clear the ground...

 

 



Me, Carl and Gordon.

 

...and ourselves away. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Pete, canny lad,  is absent from this ceremony, having flit to a sunnier place for a while).

John Worsnop - Volunteer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putting Wynch Bridge End Cottage Garden to bed for Winter

It has been a long hard job getting the garden of Wynch Bridge End Cottage (formerly Rose Cottage) designed, planned and 'worked', over the past few years - but at last, I think we are seeing the fruits of our labours.  So many people have helped and we have had many hours of hard gardening, good friendship and lots of flowers, fruit, vegetables, bees, butterflies - and inquisitive birds, cows and people!

 

After two excellent days of work, we have cleared, sorted, pruned and dug. Wynch Bridge End Cottage garden has been put to bed for Winter.   Come March next year and we will be ready to start again and welcome the new shoots.

These last two sessions have been so good.  Everyone has been  enthusiastic to complete the task, it's been beautiful to enjoy the Autumn sunshine and interesting to see all the plants that had 'taken over'.  I hope they all bed down now and enjoy the Winter months.

 

Thanks to all who have worked, learnt and enjoyed the garden in 2016.

 

Jo Hayes, Volunteer Green Guide

Wynch Bridge End Cottage will have several open days next year, the dates of which will be published shortly once we have finalised our 2017 Events Programme.

If you live locally and are interested in volunteering with us as a Volunteer Gardener at Wynch Bridge End Cottage, please get in touch.  You can either email Emma King at Moor House - Upper Teesdale NNR base or telephone the base on 01833 622374 for more information.

Training Update

Recently, we had a week of very interesting and informative training, starting with a two day 'Bats and Woodland Management' course run by Fran Flanagan from Natural England's Field Unit.  We were interested in learning more about bats and their habitat needs because we manage some of the finest ancient oak woodlands in north east England, at Derwent Gorge and Muggleswick Woods, near Consett in County Durham.

The course was held at Castle Eden Dene NNR, which was a perfect location for it with its fantastic stands of ancient oak and ash.  During the course we learnt about many different types of bats and their ecology, lifecycles, and habitat preferences, including their different roosting requirements throughout the year.  For example, bats have different roost sites for day, night, maternity and hibernation, and they roost in different numbers according to their species.  We also learnt how to recognise potential roost features on trees, such as knot holes, splits, cracks and loose bark.  This was of particular significance as it means that we can now take this into consideration when cutting and/or felling.  Without dedicated equipment we may not always be able to  tell for sure whether bats are roosting in a tree but at least we can now recognise potential places they could be roosting and take appropriate action to avoid disturbing them or damaging their habitat.  It was in fact surprising to learn just how small a gap a bat can squeeze into and that you can find some species, such as the common pipistrelle, roosting in trees whose trunks are as small in diameter as a baked bean can.

Separate from this, some of our volunteers  were given an introduction to Fungi by local enthusiast, Rachel Richards, to help develop their identification skills. This half day course began with a PowerPoint presentation at Bowlees Visitor Centre, giving a basic overview on what fungi are, their role in the ecosystem, their structure, reproduction, taxonomy, plus how to collect and identify them.

This was followed by a foray around the Low Force area, where we were both surprised and delighted to discover a large number of different species, once we got our eye in (they can be rather well hidden).

We then took our samples to Wynch Bridge End Cottage, where we had a go at identifying what we had found.




 

 

An eventful weekend

Saturday 10th September saw the last open day of 2016 for Wynch Bridge End Cottage.  Lynn Patterson, one of our volunteers, reported:  'All were very interested in its story.  Several people had close connections with the immediate area and brought along photographs and had their own stories to tell. The garden was favourably commented upon.  The byre was open for viewing with the old tools inside, and we put information boards  in the yard about the hay meadows and hay time.  Also on display were replica artefacts showing how Upper Teesdale has probably been populated over thousands of years.  We had over 45 people and were kept busy all day.' 

Sunday 11th September brought continued good weather for our Up on High Walk, led by our Reserve Manager, Martin Furness. The group scaled Cross Fell, the highest point in the North Pennines, and walked over Great Dun Fell, the highest point on our National Nature Reserve.

 

Martin took them to the source of the River Tees and also explained along the walk about the wildlife that survives on these wild fells.

 

Martin reported, 'It was a great day, with great views and it certainly blew the cobwebs away!'.

 

We have just one event left now on our 2016 Events Programme, on Saturday 1st October, which is a family fun event entitled 'Small Mammals in the High Force Area'.  Help local expert, Ian Findlay, to measure and weigh the shy and secretive mammals that live on the way to High Force, before returning them to their homes. Booking essential.  Ring our Reserve base for more details. 01833 622374.