WILTON ONE CRAG CLEAN UP

The BMC own a number of crags in the UK with the aim of keeping them open to the public. As you can imagine some of these need more work than others. One that's been in need of some tlc for a while is Wilton One near Bolton. The old quarry has become over run by rhododendrons to the extent it's almost unusable. The BMC organise cleanups of varying sorts all over the country. In this instance a local BMC activist John Wilkinson was to be the organiser for the Wilton Clean up.

The idea was to arrive at the meeting point for about 9:30. Chris and I turned up a little early and waited for everyone to arrive.  Once we were all there John gave a briefing. He explained the objective and pointed out the Rhododendrons that needed to be cleared. Couldn’t really miss them as they had over run the place!  We split into 3 work groups and attacked the all pervasive rhodeee's.  We cut down pretty much everything around us.  One team worked in the lower tier but Chris and I worked in the upper tier.  Being keen climbers we were keen to get on the end of a rope so we abseiled down the crag, through the Rhododendrons, and cut down everything we could get at.

The piles of cuttings got big really quickly so a bonfire was lit and we sacrificed the dastardly rhododendrons to keep everyone warm!   The cutting and hacking went on until we started to see rock rather than wood and we worked until the sun went down with a brief tea break in the middle. Once packed up we retired to the pub, as you do.  Cotswold Outdoors involvement with the clean up came in the form of Chris Quigley our Deansgate store supervisor and myself, Adolfo Cerro, a regular team member.   Cotswold also fed and watered the hungry workers in the pub at the end of the day and as a way of saying thank you to all those volunteers that attended we gave out 15% discount voucher as our way of saying a big thank to everyone.   We'll certainly be helping out with other cleanups in the North West in future it was a good day out and I certainly felt like we'd achieved something at the end of it.

We've posted a bunch of photo's from the event as well.  The link is here 

Adolfo Cerro