This is our fifth newsletter since the Friends group was formed three years ago during Covid restrictions, on land that has now become the Visitor Centre that is proving to be such a valuable amenity for the local population. For information about the attractions at the reservoirs and how to book onto activities, please visit: https://lisvane-llanishen.com/

The Centre and site development was shortlisted for a community benefit award by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Friends committee members were among those who met the judges to help explain the impact that the reservoirs had made.

Welsh Water have also put the reservoirs forward for the Green Flag Award – the benchmark international standard for publicly accessible parks and green spaces. Julie, our Treasurer, was also able to meet with the assessor to discuss the bid.

Many thanks to all those who attended our social event at the Visitor Centre in March. This was a great opportunity for volunteers to meet up. We heard from Richard Cowie from RAG about the fight to save the reservoirs – as documented in his excellent book “Save our Reservoirs”. We also had a presentation on the Digital Memories project from Conor Chipp from Digital Communities Wales.

Reservoir Action Group (RAG) donation

RAG was wound up last year and its members agreed to donate a very sizable part of its remaining resources to the Friends. As set out in the previous newsletter, the donation will be used to broaden access to the site to benefit the wider community – thus enabling individuals and groups from more disadvantaged backgrounds to engage with nature and take part in sailing, other water and land based activities available at the reservoirs. Since receiving the funds earlier this year, we have spoken to members with a particular interest and have met with Welsh Water to explore the option of working in partnership to develop a People and Places grant bid to the National Lottery. If you are interested in being involved with this project, please let us know.

Annual General Meeting

This important meeting for the Friends group will take place at the Visitor Centre on the evening of Wednesday 10 July. At that meeting there will be a proposal for the group to seek charitable status, elections to several committee posts, some constitutional change proposals and an opportunity ask Welsh Water questions relating to the site.

Your committee

Many thanks from us all for their contributions to the Friends group to Amit Jain and Rajeev Sharma, who have resigned from the Committee due to other pressures on their time. We welcomed Paul Hardy who has generously agreed to be coopted onto the committee until the elections at the Annual General meeting next month. Please use our membership email if you want to get in touch with us: membership@friendsofcardiffreservoirs.org

Thanks also to all those who responded to our recent survey which will help the Committee to plan future activities and opportunities.

We continue to schedule regular drop-in sessions in the Visitor Centre café for members to drop by and chat and for people to find out more about the Friends group and the volunteering opportunities offered. Future dates include Saturday 27 July and Saturday 28th September from 10am until noon.

Friends’ membership

We now have over 300 members. Details of how to join the Friends group are on the Membership section of our website and costs just £5 per year (or £10 for a household). We are keen to include more members on our working groups, so please contact us if you would like to help. Anyone with IT, Welsh translation, marketing and/or communications skills would be particularly welcome (to support our website, social media and Welsh language communications).

Digital memories

The project to capture digital memories of the reservoirs is being developed in partnership with Welsh Water, Digital Communities Wales and Peoples Collections for Wales. Opportunities to volunteer to help with this project will be available later in the year. We will also be looking for some “guinea pigs” to help us test out the process.

Volunteering opportunities

With Welsh Water, we offer a wide variety of practical activities that help to manage the woodland areas. Volunteers can also act as ambassadors to help visitors get the most from their experience at the reservoirs or help preserve and record the rare fungi by raking the embankments in the spring or taking part in the annual autumn surveys. We have also provided opportunities for members to become Dementia Friends.

This year we are also offering the chance for volunteers to train as “walk leaders” to welcome visiting community groups to the site and, in pairs, lead guided tours to introduce the history, ecology and activities available.

To give more of a flavour of what can be involved with these activities, Steve Swindell, who led a tree-planting activity, sent the following message:

“I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to all the volunteers who, with great enthusiasm, worked extremely hard with our very successful hedge planting at the reservoirs on 27th March.

This was a joint project with the Rangers and we planted 300 trees to fill in the very large gaps in the perimeter hedge at the Black Oak Gate entrance. This extension to the native corridor connecting habitats will be of great benefit to the resident and migrating birds, butterflies, moths, small mammals, insects, amphibians, pollinators and not forgetting hedgehogs for many hundreds of years. Somewhere to live, breed, hibernate, shelter, forage and feed on the smorgasbord of flowers, berries, nuts and bugs. In addition to our wildlife, hedges play a vital role in cleaning up our air and storing carbon in their wood and roots.

In keeping with the ancient woodlands at our reservoirs and for the greatest biodiversity benefits, native British trees were chosen, Hawthorn (50%) Blackthorn (15%) Hazel (15%) Field Maple (15%) and Holly (5%). The hedge has been planted in a triple row to help maximize the benefits.

A few years after the second world war it was calculated that if you placed every hedge in the UK end to end you could circumnavigate our planet 20 times. Nearly 500,000 miles. In the 90’s this exercise was repeated and it showed that sadly only around 250,00 miles remain. So, in less than eighty years we have destroyed half of them, absolutely shocking. Thankfully, most of us have a much greater understanding of our environmental impact and are changing our ways. Indeed, with Projects just like ours, together with government initiatives it is wonderful to hear the number of hedges is now increasing.

Once again, many thanks to all our wonderful volunteers and let’s continue to do our bit to combat climate change.”

We try to email members about all volunteering opportunities on a regular basis. These opportunities all appear on the volunteer management system (Team Kinetic). The best way to book onto these opportunities is by logging on to the system (Login Page (teamkinetic.co.uk)). Please email membership@friendsofcardiffreservoirs.org if you wish to enrol on Team Kinetic for the first time.

If you have any difficulties with Team Kinetic, Richard, our IT support, is happy to help (email: ITsupport@friendsofcardiffreservoirs.org).

Our current social media accounts are: Instagram: fofcreservoirs; X(twitter) @FofCReservoirs. Website: friendsofcardiffreservoirs.org