It was lovely to meet up with several members of MNTV where we welcomed two new members on a lovely autumn day. We walked along the track from the rangers yard with two wheelbarrows full of tools, tree poppers, saws, loppers, etc. We unlocked the gate to the Engine Vein mine entrance and went through locking the gate behind us just in case the public decided to follow. One of the fun bits for me of volunteering with MNTV is getting to go places the public don’t have access to.
The task was to remove vegetation, mainly birch trees, from the rocks above the mine to prevent the roots damaging the mine.
We set to work. Any trees that we couldn’t get out with the specialist tree poppers we removed the tops and left a stump so it could be winched out later.
We found some lovely examples of Amanita muscaria mushrooms amongst the saplings – they look just like the mushrooms in children’s story books:
The second task was to use the saplings we were removing to create a basket weave fence around the area.
This will help keep people out and disguise the metal stock fencing.
We worked all day but found time to eat cake and chat.
By the end we had cleared a lot of the birch saplings off the rocks and had had fun “basket” weaving the brash into the fence:
Once we had collected all the tools we went to look at the mine entrance which is hidden in the rocks unusually above the gully. The door is an old bank vault door.
We walked back to the cars tired but satisfied that we had done a good job in good company.
Jenny
