A COUPLE were honoured last night for devoting more than 50 years to protecting and enhancing the North East’s finest landscape.

Trevor and Dorothy Hardy joined the Northumberland National Park voluntary ranger service when it was set up in the spring of 1960.

Last night, in the first Northumberland National Park awards, held at the Jubilee Hall in Rothbury, Trevor, 86, and Dorothy, 88, were presented with the Curlew Award for exceptional contribution. The couple live in Kenton in Newcastle and grew to love the national park when they had a caravan near Rothbury. “Dorothy and I have done most of our volunteer wardening together,” said Trevor, who worked for Tyneside consulting engineers Merz and McLellan.

Trevor became secretary of the volunteer wardens service in 1964 and served for in the post for 18 years.

He was also a founder member of the national Countryside Volunteer Wardens and the Pennine Way Council.

The couple organised the first guided walks in the park and Trevor started the volunteer warden patrol system.

This sees wardens offer help and advice to park visitors.

The couple have worked on a wide range of conservation projects, one of the first of which was filling in forestry trenches to restore the water level to one of the most important Border Mires.

Another venture was helping to lay stone slabs from redundant Lancashire textile mills to create a durable surface for the Pennine Way in the Cheviot Hills.

A further project was building shelters on the Pennine Way in the upper Coquet Valley and the College Burn.

The couple also did their share of planting the 40,000 trees which have been put in place by the volunteer wardens over the years.