Local People

Ibet when Tina Hutton-Fellowes was serving in the Royal Logistics Corps in countries like Kosovo or Belize, she never thought she’d one day be rescuing hedgehogs in a tiny village on the edge of Dartmoor!

Tina was originally from Plymouth and served 22 years in the Army. She and her partner and son moved to Sparkwell around seven years ago and now she now works as a gardener locally.

Tina said: ‘I’ve always loved gardening - I love the fact I can choose my clients and fit in other things around my work.’

A close affinity with the seasons and nature is key to a gardener - and Tina’s love of all animals is what has led her to her most recent mission, promoting awareness of hedgehogs and how their survival is threatened in many areas of the country.

‘I’ve always loved animals,’ said Tina. ‘I did a course with a hedgehog carer in Plymouth at the end of last October - by the end of November I was caring for hedgehogs and getting more experience through working with a lady in Dartmouth - she’s caring for about 57 at the moment!’ Tina gets up at 5.30am on weekdays to clean and feed her ‘little rascals’ before taking her son to school. Her hedgehog dormitory in the garden is spotless - though she said they are not the most house-proud of guests and she gets through huge amounts of old newspapers!

‘I’ve been really lucky - ever since I put something on our local Facebook page, I’ve been given food, fleeces, newspapers - people are so generous, it’s amazing.’

She’s also boosting her knowledge through more courses and is clearly Tina Hutton-Fellowes Hedgehog helper...

passionate about the little prickly creatures’ welfare.

‘I just think we can all do a bit more - I wasn’t sure how this was going to pan out and didn’t think I’d end up with eight hedgehogs in my shed - it’s been a quick progression, but it’s lovely!’

Tina explained that the hogs were completely nocturnal - so if you see a hedgehog during the day, at

any time of the year, it indicates there’s something wrong. It could be a problem with parasites, an injury or they could be particularly hungry. Parasites have been a serious problem this year apparently. If you see a small hedgehog during the day in November or December, it’s likely they were born at the end of the year and haven’t reached the 650g weight they need to be to hibernate. These little ones will need to be looked after by carers like Tina, to enable them to survive the winter. “ I just think we can all do a bit more - I wasn’t sure how this was going to pan out and didn’t think I’d end up with eight hedgehogs in my shed ”

To help hedgehogs, Tina advises that gardeners shouldn’t use slug pellets or pesticides and should try and keep netting off the ground, as the hogs can easily get trapped. Makes sure there’s a small hole in your garden perimeter so they can access the next piece of land without heading for the road and if you think you have a hedgehog in your garden, put out wet or dry cat or dog food, placing it on the garden perimeter. Pick up litter whenever you see it and if you can, leave a small wildlife space in the garden. And if you feed mealworms to the birds, don’t sprinkle them on the ground. ‘Hedgehogs are actually fussy eaters,’ said Tina. ‘It’s a bit like us with sugar - once they get a taste for mealworms, they won’t eat anything else and it causes calcium deficiencies which affects the babies.’ Apart from her growing love of hedgehogs, Tina and the family love to walk the family dogs, Thorn and Bentley and they all enjoy target shooting. They are also very involved with the thriving local scout group.

Not surprisingly, Sparkwell scouts are well informed when it comes to hedgehogs. n Jane Honey

National Trust Ranger

The woodlands around Shaugh Bridge to the head of the River Plym, high up on Dartmoor, form part of Peter Davies’ workspace - not a bad environment to commute to! Peter is the National Trust’s area ranger for South West Dartmoor. It’s a varied role and diff erent from many of the Trust’s sites, with free access to the public.

Peter said: ‘It’s about 3,700 acres, with two quite distinct areas. Shaugh Woods are noted for their mosses, lichens and ferns, like the Tunbridge Filmy Fern, which thrives in damp areas under woodland. The upper area has a multitude of layers of importance - for its cultural heritage and it’s internationally recognised for its archaeological signifi cance. You have Bronze Age hut circles, cists, cairns, then there are the warrens and tin workings.

‘We have otters in the Meavy, there are the Small Pearl Bordered and Pearl Bordered Fritillary butterfl ies on West Down that we are monitoring during the fl ight season. We are managing the site to benefi t these species - and we have a bat colony in the roofspace here at Lower Cadworthy.’

Peter has been in his present role around 16 years. He was brought up in the South Hams and studied

geography at university, while his working life began in a voluntary capacity for the RSPB at Haweswater in the Lake District. He moved on to Slapton Ley National Nature Reserve before securing a ranger job with the National Trust at Killerton - certainly diff erent from his current base at Lower Cadworthy Farm, tucked away in the valley near Cadover Bridge.

‘This building dates from 1826 but there’s been something on the site for much longer than that. There’s a Bronze Age hut circle in the fi eld outside and “Worthy” means settlement in Anglo Saxon,’ said Peter. ‘There are so many layers of history and in our short period of time here, we are adding to them. It’s a lovely location to work from.’ With just one other full time employee and a small but committed, much valued band of regular volunteers, Peter could be repairing footpaths one day, attending a chainsaw course the next, liaising with tenant farmers or Dartmoor National Park rangers the following day and training Ten Tors participants at the weekend.

‘Last week we were invited to attend Shaugh Prior climate emergency meeting,’ said Peter. ‘No two days are ever the same but it’s very much

LOCAL PEOPLE LOCAL PEOPLE nature conservation based, working with our tenants and partners, looking after the site for the public,’ said Peter.

More unusual was the ‘rave’ that saw hundreds of people head to Cadover on the night of Boxing Day 2019.

‘There wasn’t much we could do until the police cleared the site of people, but we were really busy after that. I picked up two huge loads of litter and two abandoned cars were subsequently broken into and set on fi re,’ said Peter.

In addition to conservation, education is high on the agenda. Peter works with groups on conservation projects, engaging with children from primary level through to college students.

You couldn’t be a ranger without having an absolute love of the area in which you work. Not surprisingly, when Peter is off duty he will often be found walking on the moors and as a qualifi ed moorland leader, he will never miss an opportunity to climb a peak, whether it’s the Monroes of Scotland or a lakeland fell. He also loves cricket during the summer, heading to Somerset to watch county games.

While Dartmoor may not have the peaks that Peter loves, it’s still clearly his special spot: ‘It can be a tough place - three years ago when we had the “Beast from the East” it was incredible - but it’s a fantastic place as well.’ n Jane Honey

Abusy mother of two small boys, Ali Bishop, who lives at Woolwell, came to the Plymouth area nearly 20 years ago from Buckinghamshire, after being posted to Plymouth with the Royal Navy. Having trained as a nurse at the University of Hertfordshire, she thought the services would be a good way to travel while working - although maybe she hadn’t thought of being posted to a hospital ship for three months during the Iraq war... ‘It was interesting,’ she said. ‘We travelled down by ship so we had a lot of practice and preparation time on the way. We were quite busy with prisoners of war once we got there, but the last few weeks were a bit of a blur - we had an outbreak of suspected campylobacter on board, which basically rips your insides out. For a ship, they contained it very well.’ After leaving the navy, Ali joined the staff of DDRC Healthcare at the Hyperbaric Medical Centre, where she has worked for the last 15 years. Regular daytime work has meant it’s been easier to look after her two boys, aged four and seven - her husband is a paramedic practitioner at Newton Abbot Minor Injuries Unit, so working round two sets of shifts would have been tough!

Ali explained: ‘DDRC is a charity that provides hyperbaric oxygen therapy to patients with accepted indications, including divers, people with problem wounds and tissue damage after radiotherapy for cancer, amongst other things.’

Ali’s role is varied - a day’s work includes patient briefi ngs, safety checks, treatments, equipment checks and much more.

‘As a senior nurse I do a lot of coordinating as well, then there’s rotas, liaising with doctors, clinical trial work Ali Bishop Senior Clinical Nurse

and training,’ she said.

There are four hyperbaric chambers at DDRC (originally established as the Diving Diseases Research Centre) in which patients’ blood is ‘super-saturated’ with oxygen. This oxygen is able to penetrate areas of compromised tissue more effi ciently than that carried by red blood cells, promoting healing. Patients being treated for wounds will probably spend a couple of months having sessions in the chambers. And DDRC sees between 30 and 40 divers a year - their treatments will be about ‘bubble squashing’ as Ali described it, as well as healing the damage caused by the bubbles, to combat decompression illness, more commonly known as ‘the bends’.

‘The chambers are like big metal tanks - ours look very industrial - we shut the doors and we push lots of air in,’ said Ali. ‘It’s noisy to start with and you have to make your ears pop like on an aeroplane. There’s a TV in

there, some patients read, some talk, some actually build close friendships through their sessions.’

Typically a treatment would last around two hours including three 30 minute oxygen sessions - a diver with the bends could be in the chamber for up to eight hours.

Ali said the time spent in the chamber with patients was benefi cial in social terms, as well as physical. ‘It’s lovely to have the time to get to know your patients a bit better,’ she said.

Ali is also a wound care specialist, having received a distinction for her MSc in Wound Healing and Tissue Repair from Cardiff University - her dissertation stemming from a project on diabetic foot ulcer treatment using hyperbaric oxygen in Plymouth.

In addition to her busy working and family life, Ali and her husband enjoy days out with the boys - she also likes cycling and has signed up for the ‘Swim 22 for Diabetes’ which will see her swimming 22 miles over 12 weeks - the equivalent distance to swimming the Channel.

‘It’s in a pool though - I wouldn’t do it in the sea - too many jellyfi sh!’ she said. n Jane Honey

“DDRC is a charity that provides hyperbaric oxygen therapy to patients with accepted indications, including divers, people with problem wounds and tissue damage after radiotherapy for cancer, amongst other things. ”

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