Burning brash at Thurstaston Sunday 20th March 2016

I think this was the 10th day without rain - and we had another fantastic MNTV workday, this time on Thurstatston common.
Three of us travelled together from Quarry Bank Mill in Neil's Roomster (so much space!) and 4 others from MNTV met us in the car park at Royston Park. We were joined by Phil the Ranger and Heather from Merseyside volunteers. From there the 9 of us walked, with our equipment, to the area where we were to be working.

When we got there, we continued the wood clearance work that we'd previously started. On that occasion we were cutting down the smaller trees in this particular wooded area near the heathland, but had to finish early because increasingly high winds meant it was unsafe to work in amongst the trees in case they came down. Today we were cutting off the branches from the already felled trees and dragging them to the fire to be burned.

The fire in it's infancy

To protect the ground and manage the size of the fire, it was started on a couple of corrugated metal sheets, which were kept off the ground by a few tree trunks underneath.

Lunch break

As the ground and wood around was so dry, Neil had no trouble getting the fire going. The rest of us, using bowsaws and loppers, cut the branches off the tree's that were stacked in piles nearby, and dragged them towards the fire.

Neil taking a well-earned break and surveying the fire

It was a lovely bright clear day, although we got a bit of a breeze from the heathland. There were lots of families walking on the path nearby, some stopping for a chat. As a particular family were walking by, a very very excited little girl could be heard shouting out "Look, it's a REAL file, a REAL fire" :-)
Many dog owners also passed by, some dogs 'inspecting' our rucksacks to see if they could find any food, but we were wise to this and had zipped them firmly shut!!

Almost time to leave

By the end of the day, we had almost burnt all the brash that was lying around. I believe future workdays will involve us doing similar work on the other side of the path - bring it on!!!