Gamekeepers sculpt heather message for ambulance crews

Gamekeepers on Greenlaw Moor in the Scottish Borders have demonstrated their solidarity with health workers after counting the ambulances passing them on the Duns road. Head Gamekeeper Jamie Goodall and Tom Wilson realised how much busier the road adjacent to their ground had become with emergency vehicles during the Covid-19 crisis.

Whilst carrying out agreed heather cutting, the pair were spotting eight or nine ambulances at a time and decided to express their moral support for the passing crews. After cutting 20 acres of heather to prevent a fire hazard in the warm Spring weather, they put their swipe and mower to use to show their unity with the passing ambulance service workers; cutting the letters NHS into the hillside.

How the letters look from above, with the gamekeepers’ tractors in the background (Picture: SUMG).

“An area of the ground we were working on is adjacent to the Greenlaw to Duns road and we were chatting about the number of ambulances we were seeing, compared to before,” said Jamie Goodall, a member of Southern Uplands Moorland Group, whose aunts were nurses and whose mother works in the care sector.

“At times there were 8 or 9 in the period we were working. It was when we were talking about it, we decided it would be a good idea to use the mower to cut the words into the hill for when they were passing by. Hopefully they can see it and will feel their work is being appreciated by us all.”