IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 40

Text A — HARROWDALE COUNTRYSIDE TRUST: FIVE FAVOURITE WALKS

The following five walks are managed by the Harrowdale Countryside Trust. Detailed maps are available free of charge at the visitor centre or downloadable from our website.

1. Otter Brook Loop — 3.2 km, easy A gentle riverside path broadly suitable for buggies and most wheelchairs. The route is fully signposted in green and normally takes about an hour at an unhurried pace. Two benches and a small picnic field are situated halfway around. Dogs welcome on lead.

2. Coppice Ridge Trail — 5.8 km, moderate A circular walk through ancient broadleaf woodland with a short climb to a viewpoint. Sturdy footwear is recommended; sections typically become muddy after rain. Yellow waymarkers throughout. Allow approximately two hours. Not suitable for buggies.

3. Bracken Falls Path — 7.4 km, moderate-to-hard A there-and-back route to the falls, crossing a stile and one stream by stepping stones. The stepping stones can be impassable after heavy rainfall; please check conditions at the visitor centre on the day. Allow three to four hours including a stop at the falls.

4. High Tor Circular — 11.6 km, hard Open-moorland walk with an exposed ridge section. Map and compass essential; mobile-phone reception is unreliable above 400m. Allow four to six hours. Red waymarkers, supplemented by stone cairns on the ridge. Strong winds typically make this route inadvisable in winter.

5. Salt Marsh Discovery Trail — 4.5 km, easy A board-walked route through coastal salt marsh. The walk is fully accessible but cannot be completed at the very highest spring tides; the visitor centre publishes a tide table at the start of each month. Excellent for birdwatching, particularly between October and March. Dogs not permitted at any time of year, to protect ground-nesting birds. The visitor centre at the trailhead car park (free, donations welcomed) is open daily from 09:00 to 17:00 in summer and 10:00 to 15:00 in winter. Hot drinks, basic snacks and walking-stick hire (£2 returnable deposit) are available.

Text B — THE HARROWDALE COUNTRYSIDE SAFETY CODE

Please follow this code on every visit. It exists to keep you safe and to protect the wildlife and farmland that share these paths.

Before you leave: Tell someone where you are going and when you expect to return. Check the local weather forecast within twelve hours of departure. Carry a paper map; phone batteries typically fail in cold weather and reception is normally unreliable on the high ground.

What to bring: Waterproof outer layer, warm mid-layer, sturdy footwear, drinking water (at least one litre per person), and high-energy snacks. On longer routes, also carry a small first-aid kit, a whistle, and a head-torch.

Gates and stiles: Always close a gate behind you, unless you find it propped open with a clear notice — in which case leave it as you found it. The clear notice tells you the farmer has opened it deliberately for stock movement.

Wildlife: Keep dogs on a short lead between 1st March and 31st July, the bird-nesting season. Beyond these dates, dogs may be off-lead provided they are under close control. Never approach livestock, particularly cows with calves; if you must cross a field of cattle, walk calmly around the edge and avoid eye contact.

Litter: Take everything home with you, including biodegradable items such as banana skins. Apple cores reportedly attract rats; orange peel takes more than two years to decompose. Dog waste must be bagged and carried out — please do not hang bags on hedgerows.

In an emergency: Call 999 and ask for the police, then for Mountain Rescue. Give your six-figure grid reference if possible; if not, describe the nearest waymarker or path junction. Stay together; one walker must always remain with any casualty at all times.

Text C — HARROWDALE NATIONAL PARK: TRAINEE RANGER POSITION

The Harrowdale National Park Authority is currently recruiting six trainee rangers for entry to the service in late October. Trainee rangers are full members of the warden team from day one and typically follow a structured eighteen-month induction alongside their regular duties.

Position summary - Title: Trainee Ranger (eighteen-month fixed-term contract; permanent post offered on satisfactory completion) - Hours: 37.5 per week, normally including evenings, weekends and bank holidays on a rota basis - Salary: £26,800 (Year 1), rising to £29,200 (Year 2 and to the end of induction) - Base: Northwood depot, with regular detachment to satellite depots at Cragside and Salt Marsh

Trainee rangers broadly undertake the following core duties: - Daily patrol of designated routes, on foot or by mountain bike, including the high-fell sections of the park - Visitor liaison: meeting the public, providing route advice, leading occasional guided walks and short school sessions - Conservation: footpath maintenance, drystone-wall repair under supervision, invasive-species control and tree-planting programmes - Wildlife monitoring: simple species counts (bird, butterfly, deer transects) and recording of sightings on the Park's database - Incident response: first aid, search liaison with Mountain Rescue, response to small wildfires, and dealing with farmer-walker disputes

Essential requirements: - A valid full driving licence (manual) - Hill-walking fitness (the candidate must complete the High Tor circular in five hours including a 15kg pack as part of the assessment day) - A current first-aid-at-work certificate or willingness to obtain one within three months - Five GCSEs at grade 4 or above, including English and mathematics

Desirable requirements: - A relevant qualification (for example a Lantra footpath qualification, or a degree in countryside management, ecology or geography) - Previous voluntary experience in conservation or outdoor education - Knowledge of the local area and its wildlife

Application: Submit a CV and a covering letter (no more than two pages) to ranger-recruitment@harrowdale-np.example. The closing date is the 30th of April. Shortlisted candidates are invited to a two-day assessment in early June. Successful candidates begin in late October. Text D — TRAINEE RANGER FIRST-WEEK INDUCTION

The first week of every trainee ranger's service is spent at Northwood depot completing the following modules. Day 1: Park-wide overview. A presentation from the chief warden on the park's purposes, boundaries, principal designations, and the relationship between the Park Authority and the landowners on whose land most of the park sits. The afternoon is a guided drive around the perimeter to fix the geography in the mind. Day 2: Equipment and uniform. Issue of personal protective equipment, uniform (two summer and two winter sets), GPS unit, radio handset, dry-bag and basic survival kit. Trainees are normally charged 25% of the replacement cost of any item lost through carelessness; loss through theft or accident attracts no charge. Day 3: Map and compass. A full-day practical exercise. Trainees who do not pass the navigation assessment by the end of week four are placed on additional supervised navigation training and may not patrol solo until passed.

Day 4: Conservation principles and wildlife law. Mostly, a classroom-based half day on UK wildlife law (the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, and key local byelaws) followed by an afternoon site visit to a Site of Special Scientific Interest within the park.

Day 5: Public liaison and difficult conversations. Mostly, a morning session on giving route advice and handling polite refusals (especially relating to dogs, drones and barbecues). The afternoon is a practical exercise simulating a farmer-walker dispute, an injured-livestock report, and a first-aid casualty scenario.

After induction, every trainee is paired with a mentor — a senior ranger with at least eight years' service — for the full eighteen-month induction period. The mentor normally meets the trainee weekly during the first three months and monthly thereafter. A formal progress review is held at six, twelve and eighteen months.

A The idea that a state should set aside large areas of its territory primarily for public enjoyment and the conservation of nature is, in historical terms, generally quite new. For most of human history wild places were the responsibility of nobody and the property of whoever could exploit them; what protection they enjoyed came from being too remote or too useless to be worth seizing. The first formally designated "national park" — Yellowstone in the United States — was created only in 1872. The British equivalent had to wait another seventy-seven years. The slow journey from American invention to international institution forms the backbone of this passage.

B Yellowstone itself was the product of a particular American moment. The transcontinental railroad had opened the West to settlement, and naturalists, painters and writers — among them the painter Thomas Moran and the photographer William Henry Jackson — had brought back vivid images of the region's geysers and canyons. A campaign led by railroad interests (which stood to benefit from tourist traffic) and conservation-minded politicians persuaded Congress to dedicate the area "as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." The Act of 1872 created the model that almost every later national park would copy: a federally-owned wilderness, free of permanent residents, administered by a central authority and open to all citizens.

C The American example travelled quickly. Canada created Banff in 1885; New Zealand created Tongariro in 1887, on land donated by Te Heuheu Tukino IV, the paramount chief of the local Ngati Tuwharetoa people. Australia followed with Royal National Park near Sydney in 1879. Sweden created Europe's first national parks in 1909, in a deliberate echo of the American model. By the outbreak of the First World War, the basic shape of the national-park idea was settled: a large, wild, mostly empty area, owned by the state and managed for conservation and public recreation in roughly equal measure.

D Britain was widely regarded as a curious laggard. There were three obvious obstacles. The first was the simple absence of large empty areas: by the late nineteenth century almost all of England, Wales and lowland Scotland was owned, fenced, farmed or hunted by private landlords. The second was the strength of those private rights: a national park, on the American model, would require either compulsory purchase on a vast scale or some form of accommodation with the existing landowners. The third was political: the conservation movement in Britain was associated with the educated middle class, while the most vocal pressure for public access came from working-class walkers in the industrial north of England. The two constituencies pursued the same cause but spoke very different languages.

E The campaign that eventually broke the deadlock combined them. The Ramblers' Association, working-class walking clubs from Manchester and Sheffield, and the more establishment Council for the Preservation of Rural England gradually merged their lobbying through the 1930s. A celebrated mass trespass on Kinder Scout in the Peak District in April 1932, in which several walkers were arrested and imprisoned, made the case for public access in the most direct possible way. The Second World War interrupted progress but also created a powerful argument: the wartime evacuation of cities had reminded urban Britons of how rare quiet countryside had become, and there was political support for measures that protected it.

F The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 created the legal framework. Britain's model differed strikingly from the American one. Most of the land in the new national parks remained in private ownership and continued to be farmed; the parks were "lived-in landscapes," not wildernesses. Local National Park Authorities, made up partly of local-authority representatives and partly of central-government appointees, were charged with two duties — conserving natural beauty and promoting public enjoyment — and given limited planning powers. The first parks were designated soon afterwards: the Peak District in 1951, the Lake District also in 1951, Dartmoor in 1951, and the North York Moors, Yorkshire Dales and Pembrokeshire Coast within the next few years.

G The post-war model spread further across Europe and into Asia and Africa, often using the British rather than the American template — that is, conservation through planning rather than through wilderness purchase. By the early twenty-first century the World Conservation Union recognised more than 6,500 protected areas worldwide that met its national-park criteria, covering roughly 5% of the planet's land surface. The model continues to evolve: marine national parks, transboundary parks linking two or more countries, and indigenous-led parks (in which the traditional inhabitants of an area co-manage the protected status) are all becoming more common. The original idea — that some places are worth protecting collectively rather than dividing privately — has outlasted its original American context to become something close to a universal principle of land management.