I quite liked the idea of working outside but conservation didn´t really exist as a career then and at my all-girls school I remember being told that girls couldn´t do that sort of thing. But when at St Andrews University studying English, I found the conservation group and took to doing it at weekends, where I met my partner John. John and I moved to Leeds in 1986 where I began a MA. He started volunteering at Hollybush, so I started doing the same while I was a student, leading weekend residentials.
I just liked doing the conservation work so wanted to keep doing it. When I started volunteering there was still a lot of training around, so it was great to pick up lots of skills. English was completely irrelevant so getting the chance to learn conservation was a fantastic opportunity.
I remember going on a course about freshwater habitats including ponds. We also had great training for running practical groups and leadership training. We were doing that aged around 21 which was really good.
We took people from Leeds to North Yorkshire to do practical jobs on farms like laying hedges and planting trees. The idea was that the work needed doing and that lots of people in Leeds wanted to do it. It could be anywhere from Harrogate to the Yorkshire coast. We slept on village hall floors and cooked on portable gas burners after two days of working outside. Lots of different people went on them- the people were the nicest thing about it. People would come quite a few times during the year. It was very cheap-the budget for food per person was five pounds so it was very affordable, and the landowners would cover the costs of the accommodation.
You were in charge of 12 people and you´d help them to do everything. We´d meet them at the station with all the tools, sleeping bags and a big box of food of course. You learned how to deal with all sorts of odd situations. We carried a biscuit tin that had everything we found out we´d need for when things went wrong-fuses, money for the electricity meter-it was our emergency fixing box. (There were still quite tatty village halls then, and BTCV would always use the cheaper ones)
For three weeks running I had to call out the RAC to see to one of the minibuses we used. I ended up getting the same RAC man and in the end, he showed me how to fix the wiring so I could do it myself without having to call him out again.
It wasn´t just conservation skills you learned; it was life skills.
All the work we were doing was work you could do with people, not machines, as the places we worked you couldn´t get the machines to.
I left Hollybush when I got my first job in Doncaster. It gave you the skills to get a job and a massive amount of responsibility which was just brilliant. We didn´t just lead our residential projects but put the programme together, did the marketing, interviews. You did as much as a paid member of staff. I was volunteering there full time while I was signing on with the job centre and looking for jobs. The job centre had 3 million people to deal with so weren´t bothered about checking in with those that were doing something.
Jessica was Training Officer on Community Programme for BTCV in Doncaster and then worked in the Central Training Unit for a few months before returning to Hollybush as a VO until starting as Project Officer for BTCV in Wakefield in 1990
Written by Jessica Duffy