Congratulations to our 2021 Gordon Miller Award Winners – Miles Without Stiles, All Abilities Access Project and the Killerton Green Recovery Project.

Working in partnership with Dartmoor Wheelchair Access Group and with the assistance of the Second Sunday Volunteers, Dartmoor National Park’s Miles Without Stiles project has created easy-access routes in various sites in the Park, enabling all users to access beautiful riverside trails, pine scented forests and open moorland, all without steps, stiles or steep gradients.

Though promoted principally to people with limited mobility these new routes have wide appeal, in addition to wheelchair users they open up opportunities for families with pushchairs and young children, older people and those with visual impairments, enabling all generations and activity levels to get out and enjoy exercise and adventure.

Funded through the Government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund, the Killerton Green Recovery Project, covering a large (6,500 acre) lowland National Trust estate delivered on climate and nature restoration on a large scale, and at pace!

Nature, climate and collaboration were at the heart of the project which aimed to enable ambitious nature gains to take place; restoring floodplain habitats, planting new woods, wood pasture and agro forestry, restoring ancient woodland and restoring the hedgerow network. Working in partnership with the West Country Rivers Trust, Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group and Woodland Trust, the National Trust team delivered key targets within a 12-month period, leading at scale the restoration of nature to previous intensely managed land – holding back water, storing carbon, creating priority habitats and making huge gains for biodiversity and bio abundance.