John McCarthy walks with volunteer rangers on the South Downs
Ramblings
BBC
4.5 • 768 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2013
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John McCarthy is this week's guest presenter, while Clare is away.
The theme of this series of Ramblings is listeners' walks .Today's guests are volunteer rangers on the South Downs Way, Anni Townend and Ian Lock. Anni wrote to the programme to suggest we walk with her on a six mile stretch of the Way from Housedean Farm to Southease. This is her 'patch', which - as a ranger - she walks every month carrying out conservation work including scrub clearance and hedge laying, as well as improving public access and surveying wildlife and plantlife.
OS Explorer 122 South Downs Way, Steyning to Newhaven 1:25,000
Producer: Karen Gregor.
Transcript
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| 0:38.0 | sounds. This is a download from the BBC. You're listening to Ramblings, which this week is presented |
| 0:44.1 | by John McCarthy. It's a grey and rather blowy morning on the South Downs, but lovely. The rain |
| 0:53.0 | was pelting down earlier and it's eased off a little bit. |
| 0:55.6 | And this is the last in the current series of ramblings where we've been following listeners walks. |
| 1:00.5 | And today I'm walking with Annie Townend, who wrote in to the programme and her friend and colleague, Ian Locke. |
| 1:07.8 | So, Annie, tell me, I've lost my bearings. I know I'm somewhere near Lewis in Sussex, |
| 1:11.9 | but where are we exactly? Well, we're on the South Downs Way, walking in parallel to the A27 between |
| 1:18.5 | Lewis and Brighton, and we're on the first bit of a stretch of South Down's Way that myself and my partner Richard look after |
| 1:29.5 | and Ian looks after another six-mile part further over towards Eastbourne. |
| 1:35.8 | So you are, you're called Rangers, is that right? Your volunteer Rangers? |
| 1:39.3 | We're South Downs Way Rangers, which means that we have a uniform. |
| 1:42.9 | In fact, Ian is wearing a part of the uniform. |
| 1:45.3 | Looking very elegant, I know so. Very fetching. And we look after, basically, we check the paths that there aren't, you know, this time of year left over brambles that might, people might snag on. |
| 1:58.7 | And we check the furniture. That's the gates, and we check the signage. |
| 2:05.6 | So those are our main response. Are there anything else in that we do as part of our job? |
... |
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