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August has been a bit bonkers. Work, the Edinburgh Festival & Fringe, back-to-back visitors and volunteering at an annual Art Show have all meant I have spent very little time on the National Cycle Network routes and even less time looking at the wildlife on the greenways. But Thursday was the monthly volunteer litterpick on the Blackhall Path (NCN1) in Edinburgh and while we picked up cups, straws, chocolate wrappers and poo bags, and rescued 5 shopping trolleys, I spotted a little blue mushroom on the verge in among the grass. I'm not good at fungi ID, despite several training courses through work. Luckily one of our volunteers is much more dedicated to learning, and seeing my tweet about this 'little blue mushroom' he suggested it was Verdigris Agaric. Apparently it starts off vivid blue/green, matures to yellow ochre, and then loses colour completely, so I'm pleased I saw it that day. The route was also covered in berries - brambles, hawthorn, rowan, blackthorn - and there's a definite feeling that summer is coming to an end. After such a busy month and busy city, I'm ready for it and for more quiet outdoor time as the seasons change. To probably misquote from Walden, I'd now "rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."...!

The thing I was most excited about, before coming onto this course, was undoubtedly working on Ben Lomond. The highest munro on Loch Lomond, an iconic peak and one of the most famous in Britain. My first day on site, an English bank holiday, saw streams of people hiking past us up and down all day, commenting on our work, asking questions, many amusingly asking the same thing: could you not put a stair lift in instead!? To climb this mountain is a challenge in itself, something I've enjoyed and been invigorated by several times in my personal life. But to, in effect, be paid to climb it and paid to work on it took things to a whole new level. Imagine the attached view as your office, not bad right? I like that, in the distance down the winding path, you can see some walkers. There were many more like them. The work we are doing, and the work carried out year round by National Trust for Scotland, enables people to better enjoy this famous landscape, to ease the path up and down. Being so popular, however, brings its challenges. Footfall. Sheer pressure of people on the stone pathways. Wherever it is too eroded, to work by boots and the weather, wherever it is not longer comfortable, is when people will step off the path, create their own shortcuts, just the things we want to avoid in seeking to protect the wider habitat. So our work in the coming weeks, putting comfortable stone step pitching in place, with blocking and landscaping work to the sides, will hopefully keep more water off the path and more people on it. We want people to enjoy this stunning landscape, while ensuring said landscape is protected. I picture the number of people stepping on my new stone steps over the coming years and feel a surge of pride in playing some small part in the successful life of a famous and endearing landscape. It is a case of giving something back to a place I have taken so much from, in terms of satisfaction and fitness and health. This is definitely the best ever office I have worked in. I can even forgive the lack of cafetiere options.

During a week's placement with Ryan Hamilton and his upland pathwork team, I assisted with work on a stretch of path at the very bottom of Beinn Dubhchraig. Ian, another TMTP trainee, and I spent our week digging out, building up, and filling in stretches of path. This ensured the path was built upon ground higher than the peat-bog, with drainage features set in to prevent the bog from swelling and water spilling into the path. The section of path that Ian and I directed most of our efforts was near the end of the boggy area, where we built a causeway to raise the path out of the bog to meet up with the hill ahead. We used a winch to drag large rocks out of the nearby river and used them to build a cross-drain in the middle of this section of path. Though this work site didn't have the views of a mountainside path, we were instead surrounded by Caledonian Pines, enjoying lunch by a beautiful stretch of river with dragonflies occasionally landing on our shoulders. A fair trade I would say. It was certainly a welcome change of scene, and a great week of work.