By Elena Grice

The weekend after our action at St Paul’s Cathedral, most of the Wild Card team headed up to Langholm for a weekend to be together in person, without managing a large crowd and photographers, to dream into the future, and to gain inspiration from visiting the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

After our work on the Duchy of Cornwall’s land on Dartmoor, we started diving into the commons, the history of land enclosure and the future of community right to buy. Looking into this, the flagship community rewilding project at Langholm naturally came into view.

We arrived on Friday evening to a cosy log cabin, six women and gender diverse people, all hugging and cooking and eating and laughing. The first night we settled in and got the log fire going, the cold Scottish autumn night drawing in as we caught up with each other wine and herbal teas flowing freely.

The next morning dawned misty and cool. We got ourselves ready and headed down to the office to meet Jenny, the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve Manager. She welcomed us with hot teas and a lot of interesting stories about how it got going. The local Langholm Initiative, created to regenerate the area after the mills closed down, had managed, over covid, to raise £6 million to buy out a 10500 acre grouse moor from the Duke of Buccleuch.

After much chatting, we headed out to get a view of the reserve from a high point. The wind was fierce and rain started to fall… sideways. We jumped back in the cars and drove to a section of gorgeous woodland, ancient trees surrounded by new birch growth, sprung up in the last 20 years since grazing pressure was eased. It was lush and bejewelled in the way only an Atlantic rainforest can be. The rain increased, and a number of us discovered that either trousers, boots or coats were not as waterproof as we had hoped.

We decided to head back to the office for lunch and to dry out, getting into discussions around the gaming industry, the rampant sexism still found in certain sectors and hearing more about the Common Riding, a common practice on the Borders to declare certain rights.

It cleared up and the sun shone, so we soon jumped back into the Landrover and bumped our way along to another part of the reserve. We walked along a river bank, tangles of bare branches splashed red with haws, hips and rowan berries, now a perfect autumn day. We saw a buzzard gliding in the distance and strode up the hill to look out at the rolling landscape. Fresh growth of scrub and trees was showing up everywhere, and Jenny pointed out a house that was being renovated, to be rented out when ready. Remote and stone-clad, it looked like the perfect getaway to work on a book!

We got in tired, slightly damp, but happy and inspired. We started the fire up again and started in on the church debrief. We spent the evening chatting by the fire, then getting sleep for the next day.

In the morning, half of us went off to shoot a video, while the rest stayed in and tidied. Then we got to dreaming – what are we going to do next? What can we bring into Wild Card? What ideas had been bubbling in us? It was an exciting afternoon, that moved to the kitchen table for lunch. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to half the team on the Sunday afternoon. The rest of us had hot baths, went for walks, and watched folk horror by the fire for the last night.

The ideas will feed our next strategy meeting… So watch this space for what comes next!