About Leader's landscape training:

Landscape is our support system without which we could not exist.

Everyone depends on landscape for food, water, fuel and clean air.

A beautiful and diverse landscape with a wealth of wildlife and human history inspires and enriches our lives and provides a ‘natural health service’ for mind and body. But our fragile landscapes are under threat as never before, not least from climate change, and our challenge is to understand, support and enhance them.

Leader’s Landscape Training is aimed at outdoor practitioners to help deepen your understanding of Cumbria’s landscapes and enable you to pass on your new-found knowledge to those with whom you work.

Workshop detail:

Common land is land owned by one or more persons over which another person(s) is entitled to exercise rights of common such as grazing sheep, ponies and cattle on the common. Cumbria is important for common land as it has one third of all common land in England - 112,900 ha in total.

This land is mostly remote unfenced moorland. Local hill farming families have rights of common and graze the commons using a thousand year old tradition of collaborative management of land – a practice that is rare in modern life. The way they farm has shaped and conserved Cumbria’s iconic landscapes, its habitats and the flora and fauna we see and enjoy today.

The Lake District World Heritage Status is highly dependent on the sustainability of these people and their flocks of “hefted” Herdwick and Swaledale sheep. At times the pressure of visitors does affect the farming business. Local hill famers will explain how their farm works and how they use the different types of land available to them, including valley bottom land, the enclosed rough grazing land and the open fell / common land. They will discuss the impacts that visitors and outdoor recreation can have on their day-to-day farming activities, whilst sharing ways in which negative impacts can be minimised and visitors can help.

This session will help you understand what hill farmers actually do, and enable better conversations when you meet farmers going about their work.

Meeting point:

Keswick Rugby Club Car Park, Crow Park Road, Keswick.

We will meet and arrange to car share to the start point, to avoid parking congestion in the Cat bells area

What to bring:

a picnic lunch & walk kit for all weathers. (Please note there is no indoor backup venue so the walk will go ahead in poor weather unless unreasonable or unsafe to do so) You might also like to bring a note book and pen to capture the info from the day.

Workshop tutor:

Viv Lewis (Federation of Cumbria Commoners) and hill farmer and commoner.

Organiser: Ruth Kirk – Friends of the Lake District (can be contacted on 07851 721711, reception allowing!)

Start

15/07/2019 10:00

End

15/07/2019 14:00

Total Days

0.5

Maximum Bookings

15

Bookings

2

Venue

Keswick Rugby Club Car Park, Common land near Cat Bells

Town

Keswick

County

Cumbria

Postcode

CA12 5EG

Country

England

Latitude

54.60061

Longitude

-3.14479

Name

Mountain Training Association

Phone

01539 720788

Email