Daisy's infinity pool!

I’ve just had a week of working with a number of different groups.  One day was spent with a group of students from Keswick School.  These were students who had successfully completed the Headmaster’s Challenge by making extra contributions to their community both within and outside the school.  Their reward was to spend a day with me as Junior Rangers.

We spent the day on Derwent Island where we cut down some vegetation from the lake shore and also cleared some rhododendrons.  We followed that with a big fire.

They were an excellent group of students of course and they can be rightly proud of the very good work they did.  Everyone seemed to have a good time and Daisy certainly enjoyed the day.

We have also hosted a group from the Environment Agency for a couple of days.  They spent some time working on practical tasks with me.  We were weeding around oak trees that had been previously planted by Borrowdale school children and also clearing branches that were starting to overgrow a footpath. They seemed to enjoy their day and we achieved a lot.  The next day they had some internal meetings and then met up with me to bounce around some ideas for a project I have in mind.  I want to create a stretch of sustainable and easily accessible footpath along part of the Derwentwater shore.  It was good to hear the views and ideas from such a positive and knowledgeable group.  They were asking some in-depth questions and then identifying the problems and suggesting the solutions – a really useful contribution.

The other big task of the week was to go up to Castlerigg Stone Circle with the Trust’s archaeologist Jamie Lunt, my regular volunteers and his archaeology volunteers.  We did some routine repair work to the turf around the stones.  This is just making good the wear and tear that is to be expected from the large numbers of people who visit the site.

And finally, as the Tour de France has just started, I’ll mention that I had a morning bike ride around the lake recently that was just stunning.  No cars on the road and beautiful views across the lake.

Daisy here,

Roy says I’ve been swimming in an infinity pool.  Well the lake looked bigger to me.