JOANNE BACKSHALL
Programme Manager, Fix the Fells
Maintaining 335 mountain paths in the Lake District covering 400 miles, Fix the Fells faces a ceaseless challenge – and Joanne is tasked with coordinating the entire project. Impressively, despite relying solely on donations, the organisation’s army of 100-plus volunteers dedicated more than 2500 days in the fells last year.
All recreation has an impact and walking in the fells is no different. The majority of people who climb mountains like to follow a path, it’s human nature. But with so many walkers using the same paths, it causes erosion through the sheer trampling of vegetation. That leads to bare soil and gravel that is more easily washed away by rain, creating gullies that only ever get deeper and wider.
And that’s where we come in. Fix the Fells (FTF) works solely to repair erosion damage, rather than improve access, in the mountains of the Lake District.
The immediate impact of path erosion is on the landscape with the loss of grass and soil. Also, a lot of the affected areas are fragile environments and conservation sites, including Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) that are recognised as having national and international importance.
The financial cost of path erosion is enormous too. FTF spends £500,000 every year repairing and maintaining mountain paths and all of that money has to come from donations – we receive no government money.
Our long-term aim is to make fell paths as resilient as we can. This is becoming more challenging though, with rising visitor numbers to the Lakes and increasingly severe weather events. When Storm Desmond hit in 2016 its impact was huge, as lots of paths were really badly damaged, and for the past two years we have worked exclusively repairing damage from that storm.
Of the 335 Lakes paths we work on, those on Scafell Pike are always our biggest priority due to the enormous number of people who go there – especially for the Three Peaks Challenge, which is a definite problem as it puts huge pressure on what is already a very fragile environment.
Our rangers and volunteers can only work from March to October, as mountain environments are too harsh through the winter, when the ground is frozen and the weather too inclement.
We have a bit of a mission to explain to people exactly what we do. Some of our rangers call themselves ‘the path fairies’ because what they do is so brilliant, it probably goes unnoticed. Many people don’t think about where their boots are landing in the mountains – more likely they will be looking at the views or chatting to friends – but we would say to people to try to remember what you’re enjoying costs money. How awful would it be if FTF hadn’t been doing this work for the last 20 years? How dreadful would the Lakes look?
Our key message to hillwalkers – aside from looking for donations – would be to always stick to the paths.
“ONE KEY MESSAGE TO HILLWALKERS WOULD BE TO ALWAYS STICK TO THE PATHS”