Name: Lawrence Marchant
Age: 18

Context:
I helped the PR team at the Scouts centenary celebrations on Brownsea Island in Summer 2007, marking 100 years since the founder took 20 boys on an experimental camp on the island.

Following this I have now completed 2 Youth Discovery Working Holidays with the National Trust. During my first holiday at the High Peak Estate, I helped to dismantle an old fence and construct a new one in its place. As well as clear part of a national trail and plant Cotton Grass on the top of Kinder scout with a group of people my age.

What I did:
We were given the appropriate tools and shown how to dismantle the old fence, it took a while but we all soon got the hang of it; removing every individual staple, rolling the rusty wire and, and taking down the rotten posts. Not only did we have to take down the fence but carry each part back to the trailer on the land rover. To speed things up and to stop the live stock from escaping we had started the construction of the new fence. This took a lot of hard work to knock the posts in and keep them in a straight line. Slowly but surely the fence was completed.

On the day off we had time to explore the area. We had planned to rent out some bikes and go off on a bike ride, however this was the first day the weather had let us down with rain so we visited a cave and went for a pub lunch.

On our last day with the wardens we were taken up to Kinder Downfall to plant cotton grass in the peat bogs, this was to help hold it together and to stop the peat running off the mountainside. In all 10,000 needed to be planted costing the National Trust £5000, that's 50p per plant. I enjoyed planting the cotton grass as we got to walk up Jacob’s Ladder to the site and play in the peat bogs planting as many plants as we could.

What I’ve learnt:
My week of volunteering gave me a good insight to the work that the wardens put into the countryside. I learnt about the erosion of peat bogs and what we can do to help steady the landscape.

If it wasn’t for the hundreds of volunteers the trust gets every year they would not be able to undertake such large scale tasks. Having completed 2 Youth Discovery holidays I am now looking into ways to improve my leadership skills and lead other groups.