First Day Out With The North York Moors National Park Ranger Service

This Year I decided that it was a good idea to do some voluntary work and the National Park Rangers service for the North York moors seemed the ideal thing as I could combine walking and volunteering at the same time.

I completed the initial training weekend a fortnight ago and decided that this Saturday was the first available day I had to go out and do some rangering. Initially this is done with a ranger that has had some experience from previous years. To this end I was told to meet an experienced ranger at 10 AM at Saltergate carpark near the Hole of Horcum.

I arrived at the Hole of Horcum in plenty of time and was greeted with a winters scene, the wind was blowing and the snow was falling at quite a rate, the gritter lorry sailed passed on its  journey through to Pickering. Shortly after my partner for the day arrived and so we set off on our walk to inspect the footpaths and to meet and greet any brave souls that had ventured out for the day.

We set off from the car park and walked along the footpath into the bottom of the Hole of Horcum this bowl has been scoured out by millions of gallons of water alot of which was created by the melting of ice from the last ice age. I learnt that most of the rock is Jurassic likestone and sandstone. We then passed Low Horcam farm, which was destroyed by an avalanche in the late 60s, further on is High Horcum farm which has now been converted to what can only be described as the workds biggest bird nest box by the National Park, particularly for swallows to nest in. It has no mains electric, water or sewage to it so it must of been a hard life when it was a working farm.

We walked from there to Levisham village and along to Newtondale eventually resting for awhile at Skelton tower.

From here we walked along the escarpment top back to the rather forlorn looking Saltergate Inn, it would make a great southern North York Moors National Park base, and then back to the car park.

Throughout the walk we only passed four people, which given the weather conditions is four more than I imagined.

I returned to the car warm and dry thanks to my Paramo clothing and Scarpa SL Activ boots which I have to say are the best walking boots I have ever owned.

I am now looking forward to my next day out as a Prospective Ranger sometime in April, maybe the weather will of improved by then.