#practicalconservation

[practical-conservation-leeds]

First post and introduction!

So this is me just trying out a few thing in order to get things started on the old blogging front. I thought I would see what different kinds of posts look like before I decide whether to use this platform or an alternative.

This is going to be a place for me to post about my ongoing volunteer officer training at TCV Skelton Grange. For anyone that doesn't know, The Conservation Volunteers were founded in 1959 with the aim of harnessing the enthhusiasm of amateur conservationists to care for nature and the environment within their local communities. With the recent focus on social prescribing within mental health services, it has also become part of their remit to run groups supporting vulnerable or isolated people with their wellbeing.

I have been involved with TCV a few times in the past, including attending a Conservation Holiday in 2006 where the task was to re-surface a public footpath with gravel and reinforce the steps. I am unsure of the location but we stayed in a youth hostel and the volunteer leader came to work in a very NSFW t-shirt which he had borrowed from his son and not looked at before he put it on - LOL. Back then they were called British Trust for Conservation Volunteers and I may have been given a t-shirt as a thank-you for attending (not the obscene one that the instructor wore though).

Then a few years later I started volunteering at TCV Hollybush (based in Kirkstall) but that was in the administration office and not really involved in hands-on conservation. As a student in Leeds I had also volunteered with Hyde Park Source which again had an environmental angle, but was more about transforming bin yards in inner city Leeds (still a worthy and rewarding exercise).

It was only as a 40-something and after having taken time off work following a serious health incident that I made my mind up once and for all that conservation is the direction that I wanted my career to move in. But more on that later...

Here is a photo of my first visit to Skelton Grange:

The location itself is an odd one and quite hard to find if you are unfamiliar with that part of Leeds (which I am). You need to go up Pontefract Road and then navigate your way through a series of industrial estates in order to find it. The environment centre itself is nestled between a National Grid substation, a Yorkshire Water sewage treatment plant, and the site of a new 'combined heat and power' plant which is still under construction - e.g. not in the least bit peaceful or relaxing! On the other side you have the River Aire, and the canal (part of the Aire and Calder Navigation) which is slightly more tranquil.

This photo is of a more recent visit - you can see the new power plant in the far distance on the right: