Mend Our Mountains: seventh project for 2024 - Haytor Rocks, Dartmoor
The BMC’s Access & Conservation Trust (ACT) is pleased to announce a seventh project within the Mend Our Mountains campaign for 2024.
Haytor Rocks, one of Dartmoor’s most iconic granite tors and a popular rock climbing site, will benefit from a £10,000 grant to support the repair of footpath erosion at its base and on popular walking routes between other local tors.
Ranger Stuart Hooppell from Dartmoor National Park says, “Haytor and its neighbours, Saddle Tor and Rippon Tor to the south-west, attract thousands of visitors every year, with over 75,000 vehicles in the nearby car parks. The areas around the base of Haytor and on the paths to Saddle and Rippon Tors have become denuded of vegetation due to footfall. Vegetation loss and soil erosion has been further accelerated by rain and surface water run off, creating gullies. Without repair works these bare areas will become larger and the gullies deeper."
Ranger Stuart continues, “This autumn, the BMC’s ACT funding will help us commence the repair of 1,880m of path using 200 tonnes of growan (fine granite stone with a percentage of soil) and 20 tonnes of granite slabs. Keeping walkers and dogs on these new, clear, durable paths will protect ground-nesting birds and livestock from being disturbed. Trenches and cross-drains will redirect surface water and exposed, unvegetated areas will be infilled back to their original height.”
BMC Senior Policy & Campaigns Manager Cath Flitcroft says, “It’s important that our Mend Our Mountain campaign supports this project to repair the erosion caused by footfall from climbers and walkers at Haytor Rocks. There is no doubt that these works are vital to the preservation of the landscape and enjoyment of the area’s climbing and walking by BMC members and the wider public.”
What’s Mend Our Mountains?
Mend Our Mountains is an award-winning campaign from the BMC’s Access & Conservation Trust (ACT) which has raised a total of £1.4 million since its creation in 2016 to repair Britain’s hills and mountains. Since then over 50 miles of fragile footpath has been restored for future generations and 544 miles of upland has been repaired - the equivalent length of over 67,000 double decker buses!
This is the seventh Mend Our Mountains project the BMC’s ACT is supporting this year. The other six include:
1 Funding an Access Officer for the Cotswolds AONB
2 Supporting the Fix the Fells rangers in the Lake District
3 Restoring paths on Roseberry Topping, North York Moors
4 Making the footpath to Chanctonbury Ring, South Downs, more accessible
5 Replacing Cressbrook Mill footbridge, Peak District
6 Multiple Get Stuck In volunteer footpath repair events with the National Trust in the Lake District, Snowdonia and Peak District
Support Mend Our Mountains
Path repair is a surprisingly costly business. Working in remote locations with complex equipment and adverse weather conditions makes rebuilding trails an enormous and expensive challenge.
£5 buys a pair of work gloves
£50 buys five garden skips for moving soil
£250 fixes approximately one metre of footpath
£1000 flies ten bags of stone to an inaccessible mountain location
Did you know?
Simply becoming a BMC member supports BMC Access & Conservation Trust projects like this, plus you get all the benefits that membership offers, including these and many more:
£15 million Worldwide Combined Liability Insurance
£10,000 Personal Accident Insurance
Quarterly member-only magazine, Summit
15% off Cotswold Outdoor, Snow+Rock and Runners Need
Related Content
Access Articles
This unassuming, bright, green or red moss with lush, almost tentacle-like fronds is hiding five well-kept secrets.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
Did you know that the 140,000 miles of footpaths and bridleways we have access to in England and Wales are under serious threat? The footpaths you love the walk on are disappearing fast before our eyes due to erosion from increased footfall and more extreme weather conditions. Here are 14 reasons why we can't ignore footpath erosion.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
The BMC volunteers have been super busy this summer, with the latest Get Stuck In project seeing 12 of them create a 50m length of stepping stone path to make a more sustainable way through the bog below Tryfan, Eryri (Snowdonia), North Wales.
News
The BMC is pleased to announce our membership of Sports for Nature (S4N) - the first mountaineering organisation to do so. S4N enables and encourages sporting bodies to champion nature and contribute to its protection and restoration, an initiative that aligns completely with the BMC’s values, including our ongoing access and conservation work, aims for net-zero emissions by 2040 and new Climate & Sustainability Action Plan.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
If you're a BMC member or if you have made a donation to the BMC Access & Conservation Trust (ACT), you are directly supporting our Mend Our Mountains campaign which is funding Fix the Fells again this year. Your contributions enable rangers like Caroline Mercer to consistently repair and manage the Lake District paths that we love to walk on. We caught up with Caroline on a path above Derwent Water, near Keswick, to find out about a typical day in her life - it's pretty hard work!
Hill Walking News
This August, 14 BMC volunteers spent two days on The Band in Langdale, Lake District, making repairs to a 100m stretch of footpath in the latest Get Stuck In event, funded by the Mend Our Mountains campaign from the BMC's Access & Conservation Trust.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
BMC member Roy Hammond from Congleton, Cheshire, has now volunteered seven times for Get Stuck In events, funded by the Mend Our Mountains 2024 campaign from the BMC's Access & Conservation Trust (ACT). This summer he stepped it up a notch and led the Get Stuck In Eryri event this June, coordinating a dozen volunteers who stayed in the Lincoln Mountaineering Hut in Deiniolen, North Wales. The group worked for 6 hours during both days, including a hike up to 750m on Glyder Fach on day one. We asked Roy what he gets out of volunteering on the Get Stuck In events for the BMC, and what it's like to start organising them himself.
News
The sphagnum season is upon us again! Now that the ground-nesting birds have stopped ground-nesting, it’s time for BMC volunteers to start planting this incredible, carbon-sequestering moss at strategic locations across the Peak District moorland. Can you help us?
Olympics
With four GB Climbing athletes heading across the channel for the Olympic boulder and lead competitions starting Monday 5 August, not only are they bringing their A-game in terms of performance but, as part of the BMC, the whole team is supporting Paris 2024 in its bid to be the ‘greenest ever Games’.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
One of the biggest projects ever supported by Mend Our Mountains has hit its huge fundraising target, enabling repairs to be made to badly damaged sections along the South Downs Way.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
The dramatic skyline of the Great Ridge walk connects the summits of Lose Hill and Mam Tor in Derbyshire’s Hope Valley. Heavy footfall left the path in a badly eroded state and work to repair the damage to the path started in March this year, and has seen 500 metres of the most serious damage along the path repaired to protect the surrounding landscape and bordering habitat.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
A kilometre-long stretch of one most heavily eroded footpaths in the heart of Bannau Brycheiniog (The Brecon Beacons) has been fixed, thanks to £12,100 of funding from the BMC’s Mend Our Mountains crowdfunding campaign.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
England’s highest mountain has been a constant headache for its custodians, the National Trust and Fix the Fells, as ever-increasing numbers seek to top England’s highest summit. Yet a poignant anniversary has highlighted the continuing need for large-scale projects to repair and revamp its slopes and pathways.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
In the last three years Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park Authority have been very active in working on a number of lower level bridleways around Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) and more recently started work on the bridleway connecting Capel Curig to Crafnant. While some of these trails have given opportunities to link communities and provide access to lesser-abled users, the scale and nature of the works on some of the routes that pass through some wild and remote areas has also surprised many users.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
The money raised through the Mend Our Mountains: Make One Million appeal has started going into work on the ground, after a dramatic helicopter airlift helped path repair work to get underway on Yorkshire’s highest peak.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
Commuting with crampons, hard outdoor labour, and spending 120 hours a week with your colleagues - we speak to a mountain path repairer to find out more about the highs and lows involved in this vital job.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
Mend Our Mountains: Make One Million has helped leave a lasting legacy on some of the highest peaks not only in Scotland, but in the whole of the British Isles.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
The Nuns Cross Path is used by more than 30,000 walkers and 10,000 mountain bikers, as well as horse riders, disabled ‘trampers’ and many others each year - it is a shining example of the accessible but wild landscape Dartmoor can be. But a combination of extreme weather, like the storms of winter 2014, and erosion damage had taken its toll over the years. In stepped the BMC's Mend Our Mountains campaign.
Access & Conservation
Seven things you always wanted to know about path repair (but were too afraid to ask)
Mend Our Mountains Articles
If you're a BMC member or if you have made a donation to the BMC Access & Conservation Trust (ACT), you are directly supporting our Mend Our Mountains campaign which is funding Fix the Fells again this year. Your contributions enable rangers like Liam Prior to consistently repair and manage the Lake District paths that we love to walk on. We caught up with Liam on the very popular path up Scafell Pike from Wasdale Head to find out what a typical day in his life is like - it's quite demanding!
News
As part of Volunteers Week 3 - 9 June we have Cotswold Voluntary Warden Walk Leader Margaret Reid sharing her inspiring experience. Margaret organises and leads walks in the Cotswolds National Landscape for people from the Friendship Cafe in Gloucester. Activities like this are made possible with funding from the BMC Mend Our Mountains project from the BMC Access & Conservation Trust (ACT) charity.
News
This week is Volunteering Week 3 - 9 June so why not get involved with one of the many BMC volunteering opportunities? There are loads to choose from, including helping out at climbing competitions, leading hill walks at events and litter picking nationwide, planting seagrass in Wales, repairing footpaths in the Lake District and restoring peat bogs in the Peak District.
Access Articles
BMC volunteers from the Get Stuck In programme joined Fix the Fells last month in Wasdale on Lingmell Breast, one of the main routes up to Scafell Pike. They spent the day helping to maintain part of this hugely popular footpath up to England’s highest mountain.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
May is National Hill Walking month, but not everyone finds it easy to access this hills, whether that’s due to physical, financial or knowledge-based barriers.
News
The Watkin Path up Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) and the peat hags on neighbouring mountain Glyder Fach have benefitted from BMC volunteer improvement work on the latest Get Stuck In event, 15-16 April 2024. This was organised by Hill Walking Rep Steve Charles and Access & Conservation Officer (Wales) Tom Carrick as part of the Mend Our Mountains project, funded by the BMC Access & Conservation Trust.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
The BMC’s volunteering arm, Get Stuck In, donated £1,500 to Fix the Fells this week to buy footpath repair tools to enable our teams to quite literally get stuck in to fixing the mountain footpaths in the Lake District.
Climate Articles
The sphagnum-planting season has come to an end to allow the ground-nesting birds to, well, ground nest! Thank you to all the volunteers that have helped the BMC to plant over 16,000 plugs of this super soggy, carbon-locking moss this winter, helping to restore the Peak District peat bog.
Mend Our Mountains Articles
Mend Our Mountains is back for 2024 with six incredible access and conservation projects across England and Wales. This project is funded by the BMC’s Access and Conservation Trust charity (ACT) and we would like to thank all our members, supporters and volunteers for making vital work like this possible. Here’s what is happening this year as a result of your funding, including volunteering events you can get involved with.