volunteer vacation trip report - it was a blast!

Several people asked for a report on our volunteer week in England. The short answer: it was wonderful, and we hope/plan to do another “conservation holiday” next year. We [teen daughter and I] were helping build a drystone wall around a churchyard in Lincolnshire [Caenby, to be specific]. The working holiday was organized by BTCV [British Trust Conservation Volunteers, http://www2.btcv.org.uk/], who are celebrating their 50th anniversary; they run holidays of varying lengths from a weekend to more than a week, primarily in the UK but also other countries, and they also do individual days all over England. On our trip, there were about a dozen of us, including the 2 leaders; we stayed in a small youth hostel about 20 minutes from the site [we were the only occupants]. Almost none of us had any experience with drystone walling, but the leaders were very clear and organized, and we built about 20 meters of wall during our week. DD and I had originally planned to do a Habitat for Humanity Global Village build but were deterred by the cost [about $2000 for 2 weeks in Hungary, not including airfare]. So we looked for some way to both see and contribute to the world at a more reasonable rate and found this week with BTCV for about $200, which included lodging and all our food except for our day off. We were the only Americans; a couple of French teenagers were there for part of the time, plus 3 English teens and 2 English adults in addition to the leaders. It was a very nice mix of people, and DD and I really enjoyed the chance to connect with Brits. [continued]