Successful Projects

Funds Received - £4,000.00

Eat, Sleep, Ride, CIC received £4000 from Blackhill Windfarm Community Fund to plant native woodland trees across our site and erect fencing around the area to keep the trees safe from our 4 legged friends. The funding paid for the purchase of the tress, stabs and shelters, qualified tree planter to deliver 3 sessions with 3 target groups, young people attending youth club, on alternative school provision, adult males completing community pay back orders.

Impact

1 young male became a volunteer for ESR and went on to complete his paths for all walk leader training.

1 young boy completed his NOLB contract and working in the outdoors gave him the inspiration to apply for an Outward-Bound survival camp on Loch ELI, he was accepted

1 young boy on school provision continued with ESR on a rural skills project and has an interest in working outdoors when he leaves school.

We learnt that the young people and volunteers really enjoyed working outdoors and getting their hands dirty and learning how to plant and look after trees as well as identifying tree species and why they are important for the planet. They learnt how to plant and protect a tree from wildlife, how different species of tree will grow differently, how different species like or need different soil/environments, that the 2 main ways trees are grown in a nursery, bare rooted and cell grown, the different animals that will be a pest for trees and what they do to them and how it can kill them, why tree planting is so important especially with protection to ensure a woodland can form

The greater impact for ESR is we are increasing biodiversity and habitat creation as well as providing natural screening and wind and noise barriers in the future

Funds Received - £700.00

The grant from Blackhill Windfarm Community Fund has certainly played a major role in moving our EBGR project forwards.   We now refer to the project as the Borders Greenway.

We have formed a Community Consultation Group which is well supported by community groups along the route from Melrose to Eyemouth.   The group is led by a Steering Group which meets regularly in Gavinton Village Hall and elsewhere.

Our efforts have led to South of Scotland Enterprise and Scottish Borders Council commissioning a professional Feasibility Study of the route by Atkins Transport Consultants.   This excellent piece of work was recently completed.

Full details of the Borders Greenway project are available here.  This document includes links to a recently completed feasibility study, maps and photographs of project activities, and much else besides.

The BWCF grant has been invaluable in enabling these startup activities, and to date, we have used the fund for:

• Venue hire and refreshments for meetings with SBC officials, consultants (Atkins) investigating, route feasibility, the Borders Greenway steering and community collaboration groups, and other community groups
• Purchase of maps/marker pens to inform discussion on preferred existing walking and cycling routes between the main communities mainly following the old railway line from Tweedbank to Reston, and on to Eyemouth

Together with groups of local residents, we have completed a reconnaissance walk‑through of the entire route (over 50 miles) following existing paths, quiet roads, and some short sections of farmland.  We have documented our findings to inform discussion on issues which need attention before the route is safe for public use.  We will soon conduct a similar reconnaissance cycle‑through of the preferred cycle route, mainly following quiet roads.

We anticipate a significant increase in promotional activities once SBC has secured initial funding to progress the project.  Transport Scotland has assigned ten percent of their annual budget to ‘active travel’ projects, and, with a completed feasibility study, SBC considers there are reasonable prospects of the project becoming a reality.