Behind the scenes in winter: North East Ranger Service

Transcript

One speaker: Vivian Bisset, Ranger

Vivian
Hi, I'm Vivian Bisset.
I am a ranger for the North East Ranger Service for the National Trust for Scotland.

In the winter months, the ranger service is actually very busy and we get up to a lot of different things.
One of the main things we do is covering structures.
It's our time to repair things, perform routine maintenance on structures and all of the footpaths.
Our ranger service is responsible for looking after almost 30 miles of trail network.
We've got a very small team to cover such a large area, so as a charity we really couldn't do what we do without the support and help from our volunteers as well as our members.

In recent years in the winter months, we've been dealing with a lot of storm damage.
Storms are becoming more and more frequent, which has had a huge impact on our estates across the region.
If we didn't respond, we'd have to close the trails in the estates for access; it just wouldn't be safe for people to come and enjoy the beautiful places that we're able to offer in the North East.

Today, we're here at Castle Fraser repairing some stakes on a staircase in the woodland on the trail.
We do routine countryside infrastructure checks, and with these we test different aspects of our structures.
So today we were looking at the stakes that hold the steps in place.
We had a few that have rotted away over the years so today we're replacing some stakes on the steps to make sure that they're stable and safe for our visitors to access the trail.

We do what we do because we want to connect people with nature and with the outdoors.
Doing something like we have been today is ensuring that people have access to nature and we can connect them with the natural heritage around them.
We couldn't do what we do without our visitors, volunteers and members, so thank you for your continued support.