Mountain leader meeting for Wales

The fledgling Mountain Leader Training Association (MLTA) will hold its conference this November in Wales.It’s a chance to share their knowledge and discuss latest developments in leading in the mountains.

Peak District research centre will aid moorland study

An eco-friendly moorland visitor centre will open in the Peak District next month.The Moorland Visitor Centre will also house a research centre for moorland issues, with a library for specialist study into the eco-system of the moors in the Peak.The visitor centre will be opened by the Duke of Devonshire on 14 September.

Rescue team says charity walkers are ill-prepared

Inexperienced charity walkers are putting lives at risk by venturing on to the Cumbrian mountains without the skill and knowledge they need.Mountain rescue teams are being called out to help parties taking part in the Thee Peaks Challenge who ring them when they encounter difficulties.

Welsh highpoint will have Portuguese roof

In years to come, when you’ve huffed and puffed your way up the Pyg track, or joined the quaking queues on Crib Goch, you’ll be reassured to know that the highest point in England Wales will be forever… Portuguese.The folly that is the project to build a visitor centre on the top of Snowdon took a surreal turn with the news that its roof will be slated with stone brought all the way from Portugal.Right: artist's impression of the new Snowdon summit visitor centreYou might think, as your soles crush another mound of finest Welsh slate, that there would be enough stone around the summit to do the job with locally found stuff.

Can you make coffee and quote access law?

Wanted: competent person who doesn’t mind being pestered and can put up with unreasonable demands.

Yorkshire Dales autumn activities begin tomorrow

With summer becoming a rapidly fading memory, visitors to the Yorkshire Dales National Park are being offered a range of activities to entice them into the area this autumn.There are chances to learn about the upland birds of the area, brush up your digital photography skills or, if you’re that way inclined, learn how to make jam.There are also guided walks in various parts of the park area, including Garsdale, Wharfedale and Mossdale.

Still time to enter mountain-rescue challenge

A late reminder comes from the organisers of the Nine Edges Endurance, which takes place a week on Sunday.The 20-mile-long event in the Peak District is a fundraiser for the Edale Mountain Rescue Team’s £150,000 appeal for a new base in Hope (see previous grough story).So far, the Dark Peak Fellrunners have pledged to get a large contingent into the event, which starts at Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire and ends at a pub near Baslow.

Skye mountaineers' memorial may cost ??m

While the guardians of Ben Nevis propose to remove virtually all memorials on the British Isles’ highest mountain, a group on Skye wants to erect one to two pioneers of climbing.The voluntary group wants to erect a sculpture of Norman Collie and John Mackenzie and is trying to raise funds for the project.Conservation charity the John Muir Trust (JMT) is backing the idea, which aims to have the 1.5-times life-size bronze statue erected at Sligachan on the island.The organisers of the appeal also want four unsightly electric poles moved to improve the environment around the site.

Getting the message across, Scots style

grough likes the direct approach, so we were taken on by a typically blunt message to litter louts in a Scottish national park.The Loch Lomond and the Trossachs authority is telling people: ‘Don’t be a tosser’.Sound advice in any situation, but in this instance the posters, which are springing up throughout the area, along with some with a gentler message, are aimed at those who turn off tourists by despoiling the verges, lay-bys and loch shores with rubbish.Fiona Kennedy, of Killin, and a director of the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Community Partnership, said: “The materials we’ve developed this year are only the start of what we hope will be an ongoing campaign to change people's attitudes and behaviour.