Wild Garsdale Pike

We have spaces in our Youth Steering Group - Come and join us!

WGP Charity number: 1201507

200 Acres of high pasture and hill land in Garsdale, Cumbria

Like most areas of the world the Yorkshire Dales has seen, and continues to see, habitat and species decline.

There is a continuous quest for a balance between farming, industry, development, tourism and conservation and the regeneration of our natural environment

Wild Garsdale Pike works with young people giving them a voice and the opportunity to explore conservation and environmental issues and gain practical conservation and research experience.

We have a permanent Youth Steering Group of young people aged 13 - 25 years, who make 10 or more visits a year. We also host local schools, community groups and charities working with young people, to get involved in conservation and practical work on our land.

We aim to enhance the ecosystem and biodiversity of the land, connecting with other similar projects and the wider landscape and landowners.

Here's what we have planned for 2025.

If you'd like to set up a site visit for a group message us via our contact page.

Our Youth Steering Group (YSG) is open to anyone aged 13 - 25 yrs. If you are interested in joining us and/or want to come for try out day message us via the contact page or hit the join us button at the top of the page!

Saturday 8th Feb - Youth Steering Group 1 day site visit:

Checking how the conservation grazing with our three galloway cows is going now they are back in their 1 acre plot. Planning and starting our scrub planting trial on the lower western pasture.

Wednesday 13th March - Land Based Studies students from Kirkbie Kendal School Site Visit:

Understanding peatbogs as ecosystems and carbon sinks.

Saturday 15th March - Youth Steering Group 1 day site visit:

Scrub planting trial. Checking our boundary walls and fences

Wednesday 3rd April - Land Based Studies students from Kirkbie Kendal School Site Visit:

Understanding types of woodlands as ecosystems and carbon sinks.

Saturday 5th April - Site Visit YSG

Sunday 6th April - South Lakes Sight Advice Site Visit

Wednesday 28th May - Visit from HF Holiday Group

21st 22nd June - YSG 2 day site visit and wild camping

9th, 10th, 11th August - YSG 3 day site visit and wild camping

Wednesday 11th September - HF Holidays Group Site Visit

Youth Steering Group and Green Lancaster Students Oct 24

In 2025 we are going to be progressing our ideas with conservation grazing, planting some scrub, monitoring and surveying, progressing our peat bog restoration, growing our Youth Steering Group ....

Join Us

If you're aged 13 - 25 yrs you can be part of the Wild Garsdale Pike Project by joining our Youth Steering Group

We have been working with young people at WGP since 2021 and they play a key role in the project - meeting conservation experts, undertaking survey work and working with the trustees to decide the direction of the project. We're looking for young people who share our passion for nature, wildlife and the great wonderful outdoors ......

If you're:

Aged between 13 - 25 years
Interested in conservation and making a real difference to the environment
Want to learn new skills, meet experts, discuss ideas
Want to make new like-minded friends

Then come and join us

We provide:

Mentoring and Training
Knowledge and Expertise
Accommodation for residential visits
Transport

2024 another busy year at WGP!

We now have 17 members or our Youth Steering Group We still have spaces - so if you are interested in joining please go to the Join Us button above or message us through the contacts page!

January - March we built and put out bird nest boxes. We also monitored what effect the two Galloway cows and two Tamworth pigs had had on the land - efficiently water retaining for the cows and efficiently destructive for the pigs!

In March we ran a series of events in British Science Week - comparing two methods of monitoring birds, one using audio moth technology and the other a traditional walked transect. We were happy to get £500 funding for this from the British Science Association.

Through the summer we continued our monitoring of moths and small mammals, repaired lots of dry stone walls, walked in the wider landscape and dug more ponds. We had another successful visit to Kingsdale Head to see their peat and woodland restoration work and we met some of our local farmers to learn about their farming year and how they medicate their animals to prevent disease. In August we had a great wild camping 3 day site visit - when it didn't rain and we watched an amazing meteor shower - magical!

Through the year we continued to build our survey and monitoring work.

We've worked with other groups: Students from Lancaster University who are part of Green Lancaster and three groups from Kirkbie Kendal School. We have lots more exciting connections and visits coming up later this year and in 2025.

We've had amazing support from other local organisations including the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA), Cumbria Community Foundation, local farmers and Cumbria Wildlife Trust

We were pleased to get more funding from the FiPL Scheme through the YDNPA. This will enable us to start to build our storage shed/dry meeting place on the land, to buy some waterproof tablets to record our survey findings, to set up some training for some of our YSG member in using QGIS to record findings and map our land and for Cumbria Wildlife Trust to undertake a feasibility study for the blocking of the grips on the peat bog.

We received a grant from Cumbria Community Foundation to help complete or storage shed/meeting place.

Our journey into conservation grazing is continuing with the two Galloway cows, one now with a beautiful heifer calf, and possibly the Tamworths returning over the winter but with electric fence to prevent any escapes this time!! We are also meeting with the Fell Pony Conservation Trust to see how Fell Ponies could support our conservation management.

We've continued to meet with local farmers to learn about both the history of the dale and farming in the dale today

We have great connections with universities across the north - including Cumbria, Lancaster and Leeds.

We developed our Strategy and are now recruiting two more trustees to help up develop this and our work.

Find out what we've been doing here :) http://wildgarsdalepike.org.uk/news-blog

Wild Garsdale Pike is registered as a charity:

'Forming a charity linked with the land seems the best way to create this project, while ensuring its ongoing development and longevity. To achieve this, I have built a small team, with a wide range of skills in conservation and the environment, working with young people and charity governance. I want this project to be embedded in the local community from the start, with conservation experts and, particularly, young people and those studying or newly qualified in a conservation/environment subject, guiding and developing the project.' Rosey Grandage

Wild Garsdale Pike will:

Enrich the environment of Garsdale Pike, and the wider landscape, by supporting its return to nature; empower and expand the horizons of young people through their inclusion in this process.

Strategy 2025 - 2028

Our land will be managed in a way which enables habitats and species to thrive
Our project will be known to young people and organisations which work with young people
We will be contributing to survey data in an organised and consistent way, both locally and nationally
We will be hosting research projects on the land
We will be connected to a wide range of local conservation organisations and projects, thus contributing to landscape scale recovery
We will have developed fundraising and promotion strategies which meets our needs.

Charity number: 1201507

You can see who the trustees are in Meet the Team below

You can find out more about being a trustee and charity governance here

About the Project

The Context

The urgent need to enhance biodiversity through habitat and species regeneration; to connect landscapes and coordinate action, by repairing nature and our struggling ecosystems.
Harnessing the energy and concerns of young people: the future of our planet.
Farming and food production v biodiversity – a debate of our time.
Brexit and changes to funding. The decline of the basic payment scheme (BPS) and introduction of the Environment Land Management Scheme (ELMS) provides a chance to create a healthier balance
Understanding the right change in the right place: concerns about government policy and land buy ups by big companies wanting to offset carbon.

Aims

Regeneration of biodiversity and ecosystems. Creating Living Landscapes and Wildlife Corridors by seeing the wider picture and working with partners.
Enabling young people to take a lead role, giving young people a voice and the opportunity to explore issues and ideas and gain new skills.
Using the land to try things out, learning from practical research: monitoring and recording change, exploring ideas and existing research. Understanding the power of data, collaboration and communication
Enabling people of all ages to gain a deeper, practical understanding of nature and regeneration and enjoy this beautiful piece of our natural world
Enhancing communication between groups and communities: younger/older, inner city/country, farming/conservation

The Land

200 acres of high hill land in Garsdale, Cumbria, rising from 250m to over 600m (850ft to over 2,000ft). Around 35 acres is rough pasture – grass, rushes, some gorse, a few small thorn trees etc. – above this is 160 acres of rough grass, moss and some recovering peat bog. The land runs up to the watershed from where a number of springs arise forming three main streams: Gillfeet Gill West, Gillfeet Gill East and Dry Gill.

The land is enclosed by and sub-divided within, by stone walls. To the west of the lower part of Gillfeet Gill West is around 9 acres of pasture, divided across in to two parts and to the east of Gillfeet Gill West is the remaining pasture again divided in to two parts. These existing sub-divisions will work well for the project.

The 160 acres is allotment land (land which would have been common hill grazing, but which was divided amongst the farms in the mid 1800’s). Again, this is split into two allotments, the eastern one being known as Stephen’s Wife, which presumably belonged to the farmers’ wife at Stephens’ Farm just along the dale many years ago.

The highest point of the land is Garsdale Pike; according to the Senior Historic Environment Officer at the Yorkshire Dales National Park the term Pike often indicates that there was an ancient barrow associated with it and this has turned out to be the case - there is not just a bronze age burial mound, but beneath it a neolithic ring carin.

At the top of Stephens’ Wife is a large cairn known as The Old Man of Garsdale, which I haven’t found out much about except that local people rebuilt it for the millennium. It will be interesting to find out more about its history and how it relates to other cairns in the area.

There are a few ruins up on the allotments: two or three sheep folds one of which has now been beautifully restored with money from a YDNPA FiPL grant

The allotment land is Right to Roam Open Access Land, but at the moment there is no access to it. There are no footpaths up from the road over the pasture and there are no stiles over from the open fell beyond.

The geology of the dale is a mix of predominantly grit/sandstone, with some deeper layers of carboniferous limestone. This affects the plant species in that grow in the area. The soil is predominately thin, on a sandstone base which has enabled the formation of peat and blanket bog, much of which is now badly depleted through a combination of historic peat cutting for burning, and over grazing and erosion by sheep. Occasionally there are areas of lime/alkali loving plant species – evidence of carboniferous limestone water rising to the surface and affecting the soil and vegetation.

History

The land has been grazed by sheep and at times cattle and ponies, probably for hundreds of years and seems to have been part of Lindsey Fold Farm or other farms in the dale.

There is evidence of quarrying, probably for stone for walls and buildings. There was coal mining, slate mining and lime burning in the dale, but there isn’t a clear record of it on this land. Sadly, the slate turned out the be porous – so wasn’t a great success as a roofing material!

Uses, Damage and Changes

Extensive grazing, particularly by sheep, over centuries has depleted the vegetation and therefore the ecosystem and biodiversity. There are now just a few trees growing close to the rivers and streams, the predominant vegetation is grass and rushes on the lower slopes and rough grasses, some mosses and berries on the upper slopes.

The situation was made worse in the 1970’s when farmers were paid to create grips (manmade channels) to drain the water from the higher slopes. The aim was to create drier land, therefore better grazing and enhanced food production. This was a disaster for the peatland and blanket bog and all the species that relied on it and a disaster for carbon capture and flooding. It had a direct effect on this piece of land in the early 1990’s – after a storm so much water rushed off the high allotments that it caused severe erosion to the banks of Gillfeet Gill West and flooding. The scar on the gill can still be seen. However, as a result the farmers who owned the land at this time got a grant to fence off the lower part of the gill to prevent sheep grazing and causing further erosion and to plant an area of native woodland to stabilise the banks. This woodland has done well and, because it’s been sheep-free, there is also heather and bilberry regeneration which is now starting to spread out to the surrounding pastures.

These farmers made other environmentally friendly changes, which has meant that the peat bog is starting to return; there is now a lot of moss returning, including some sphagnum and as well as quite a lot of bilberry, there are other species like cranberry and cowberry.

There is still a lot more to be done, but this is a great start.

Meet The Trustees and our Team

Rosey Grandage:

Conservation Explorer and Land Custodian. Chair, Trustee, Operations Lead and Health and Safety Lead

'I’m a physio and Chinese medicine practitioner and have worked for both the NHS and in private practice in London and Brecon. Among other things, I have been a university lecturer for 17 years and been chair of a wildlife trust. I am now a trustee of the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales and have recently been appointed a trustee for The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.

For 14 years I ran a community interest company art gallery, which focused on art to raise awareness of conservation and the environment and working with and mentoring young artists. We were the first gallery to show the Environmental Photographer of the Year Award exhibition and have worked with a range of conservation charities. Until Covid hit we also ran our Arts Education Programme with local schools and colleges, enabling young artists to curate and present their own exhibition; we also mentored young local artists.

Outside my work I spend as much time as I can out in the wilds - walking, listening, learning and relaxing. We live on an amazing planet and I am passionate about understanding it and caring for it and giving others that opportunity too. Having spent much of my 20's and 30's travelling the world, I lived in China for 2 years in the early 90's studying Chinese medicine and philosophy, I stopped flying in 2000 and since then have enjoyed exploring the UK.

I had been looking for some land in Mid-Wales or Cumbria, where I love to walk and have old family connections, for a few years and am very happy to have found this wonderful piece of dale and fell.'

Paul Brady:

Conservation Advisor, Trustee and Safeguarding Lead

'Born in Middlesbrough with a passion for wildlife right from the start; I studied Ecology at Lancaster University before embarking on a career as a science teacher, determined to show young people the wonders of the natural world I love. A slight career change into the charity sector with the RSPB and more recently the Yorkshire Dales National Park and Wild Ingleborough gave me the chance to work with people, bringing nature to life in their communities, on nature reserves and in the “classroom”.

I was lucky enough to grow up with the freedom to explore local green areas, the local becks, hills and beaches. Nowadays many of these places have shrunk or disappeared altogether. It is my belief that all people should have access to green spaces and, more than that, wild spaces, and better still if they can play a part in that restoration, taking ownership. So when I discovered Wild Garsdale Pike my interest was piqued'

Paul is currently Compliance Manager for the Chartered Institute of Fundraising

Alice Slattery:

Young Trustee

Alice grew up seeing Garsdale Pike from her bedroom window, since graduating with a degree in Earth Sciences she has worked in land management and as an Environmental Scientist and has a particular interest in natural capital.

'I believe the work Wild Garsdale Pike is doing with young people for nature is brilliant! I am committed to growing the charity and providing my
technical expertise to further enhance the land and development of young people through conservation.
I am committed to environmental conservation and sustainable land
management and my academic background in Earth Sciences, coupled with my practical experience in various roles, has equipped me with a solid foundation in understanding ecological processes, natural resource management, and the application of scientific principles'

Alice is currently a Natural Capital Consultant with Savills

Sammy Haddock

Trustee

'I’ve been fortunate to always live in the lake district and graduated 2 years ago from University of Cumbria in Ambleside with a degree in Animal Conservation Science. I decided on pursuing conservation because I wanted to be in a position to help nature. Prior to uni I had done a lot of volunteering including learning to dry stone wall, remove invasive species and tackle bracken and bramble. During uni I have been able to be part of the Back On Our Map (BOOM) project, working to restore or re-introduce native species to Cumbria. This project enabled me to develop my surveying skills and work with the local community.'

Sammy is currently an Invasive Non-native Species Coordinator working along the River Kent.

Austin and Lindsay Sedgley:

Farming and Local Advisors. Austin is a Trustee.

Austin and Lindsay qualified as accountants and fell in love with the Yorkshire Dales while studying in Leeds in the 1970’s. They decided to work for four years in Zambia to save enough money to live and work in the Dales and while in Africa travelled as much as possible stimulating their interest in wild open spaces.
On returning to the UK they bought a large house and 30 acres in a remote area of Upper Wharfedale and ran it for eight years as an “ off the beaten track” guest house. In 1988 they bought Lindsey Fold, a 230 acre traditional hill farm.
The following years represented a steep learning curve about all things hill farming... understanding the uniqueness of each land holding, the realisation that, with reference to government support schemes, “ one size definitely does not fit all”, dealing with the trials of extreme weather events...yes, even 30 years ago!
While doing this Austin taught Design Technology in the local secondary school and Lindsay worked in school catering and admin.
In 2020 Lindsay and Austin decided it was time to reduce their workload and downsize and are delighted to pass on the baton of managing their area of moorland to become Wild Garsdale Pike. During the years of livestock farming at Lindsey Fold they became very aware of the conflict between managing the land profitably and minimising the damage to flora and fauna.

'It will be a great pleasure to participate in a project which will redress the balance and help educate future generations to understand the very real challenges facing local farming communities in the years to come.'

Christine Tansey:

Biodiversity and Monitoring Lead Trustee

Christine grew up in the South Pennines and now works as a Partnership Officer on the Better Biodiversity Data project at the National Biodiversity Network Trust and is focused on facilitating a
better infrastructure for biodiversity data in Scotland.

'I am supporting the work of Wild Garsdale Pike because I recognise the richness of experience that such a charity can provide to young people, whether they already have a spark of interest or are inspired by a new
connection to nature.
I am drawn to the approach of Wild Garsdale Pike in enabling young people to access the land and empowering them to shape the conversations and decision-making around its future. My experiences of volunteering in conservation and land management as a student were formative, and I am motivated by the prospect of supporting a charity that offers similar opportunities to younger people.'

Emily Franke:

Wildlife Film and Media Advisor

After studying biology and trying my hand as a field assistant in the wilds of British Colombia I moved into the world of wildlife television. Over the past ten years I have been lucky enough to work on documentaries for BBC, ITV, Nat Geo, Discovery Channel and Netflix as well as a stint down under as an impact producer for SBS Australia. By sharing the stories of the amazing humans and wildlife I meet, I hope to inspire myself and others to make more positive choices for this amazing planet we call home

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