31 March 2012: The Friends of Ilkley Moor have received £50,000 funding from WREN, a not-for-profit business that awards grants to community projects from funds donated by Waste Recycling Group.

Tracy Gray, the Friends Project Officer said “This is wonderful news. The grant will fund the control of bracken on the lower slopes of the moor adjacent to footpaths and areas popular with the general public – Cow & Calf Rocks, and other sites of interest. Money will also be spent on work re-surfacing footpaths. I hope to organise and supervise volunteer parties to help Bradford Council undertake the works. This will increase the work already completed on over 1,500 metres of paths on the moor”.

Work for the project will be carried out in 2012 and 2013. The Friends of Ilkley Moor would like to take this opportunity to thank all those groups and organisations who supported the application for the funding of this project.

From Barry Wilkinson Press Officer FOIM Mobile 07831-505051
For more information contact Tracy Gray FOIM Project Officer 0785 444 7947
For information about WREN please contact Ben Walker 01274-833262

The Friends of Ilkley Moor are celebrating their fifth anniversary. Since their inception they have published four Events and Learning Programmes with the help of the programmes the Friends Project Officer Tracy Gray has oraganised over eighty events including Bat and Bird spotting, wild flower and fungi walks, Archaeology and Geology discovery walks and many more all on Ilkley Moor led by experts in their field. Tracy has also led over 50 volunteer working mornings.

The friends have encouraged over 1,000 people to be involved in discovering the Geology,Archaeology and beauty of the Flora and the Fauna of Ilkley Moor

Said Owen Wells Chair of the Friends”We have organised working parties when the Friends and members of the public have helped to clear bracken, chopped down intrusive Rhododendrons and cleared brambles. Our volunteers have helped in clearing some of the Equisitales (Horsetails) gradually infilling the Upper Tarn . We are exploring ways in which the water level might be raised to prevent this Tarn from gradually being completely filled in.

We have enrolled nearly 500 members (a prize is waiting for our 500th) and we have raised £180,000. That is fairly impressive for a small local voluntary organisation.

Our first major project was the surfacing of the path to the Swastika Stone. The path along the wall from Spicey Gill had already been surfaced, but where that path left the wall to go up onto the Moor it was not surfaced at all and, although it is now difficult to remember, much of it was extremely boggy and unpleasant to walk (especially in winter). We paid for the hard core etc, and the work was undertaken by the Countryside Service assisted by volunteers. One of the most cheering sights, as we were finishing off the path, was to see an elderly couple coming up the path, one using a walking frame, who told us that this was the first time they had been able to get so high up on the Moor for very many years.

Children and adults discovered Ilkley Moor through a geocaching event on Saturday the 13th. The event was carried out in partnership by the Friends of Ilkley Moor and Pennine Prospects. One of twenty events organised by the Friends from May to September.