Painting tree guards and pulling Rag Wort at Hare Hill on Sunday 31st July 2016

Eleven MNTVers arrived at Hare Hill this morning, including Martin who joined us for the first time. We parked our cars in the new car park at Hare Hill, ready for a day of volunteering:-)
Although we were without a Ranger to show us where we were working, Peter the gardener had all the equipment we needed, plus some of our Group had been to Hare Hill a few weeks earlier doing the same tasks so knew what to do and where we were to start.

The work we did during the day               

We walked onto South Park and continued wire-brushing fence guards before we painted them with water-based green cuprinol. Instead, some of us walked around the field to finish pulling up the Rag Wort before any horses are put in there. We had a great day, the sun shone most of the day and we managed to paint 10 tree-guards between us and pulled up all the remaining Rag Wort.
Reporting this to John the Ranger later, he was delighted we'd managed to do so much and said, now we were in the swing of it, there was plenty more to do in North Park, when we next visit:-)


A happy bunch of MNTVers!

MNTV social: walk around Lindow Common and food&drink in the Boddington Arms - Tues 26th July 2016

Seven of us met in the Council car park across the road from the Boddington Arms, Wilmslow, at 7pm - Kate, Lyn, Tricia, Tim, Neil, Andy and Sue. We put on our walking boots on and set off on a 90minute stroll that Kate and Sue had recce-ed the week before.
We didn't take a map with us, relying on Kate and Sue's memories instead!!! It could have ended badly but, as it turned out, Kate and Sue between them remembered where to go and which way to turn at different stages of the walk so managed not to get lost:-)
It was a dry evening which was fortunate and the route was interesting, taking us past allotments of the Lindow Horticultural Society and the Lindow Scouts, past The Wilmslow Animal Sanctuary

where we stroked the horses and a donkey in the field and a lovely 3-legged black cat came out to see us, past a pre-fab/mobile home village, around Rossmere lake where we posed for a photo

before heading back to the car park for 8.30pm - passing a beautiful carved woodpecker on a tree close to the car park!


Yes, it's a carved woodpecker!

Lyn had to leave by this stage as the rest of us headed into the Boddington Arms and sat at the round table in the restaurant and ordered our meal and drinks - there was plenty of it!

Our food had just arrived!

It was a lovely evening, plenty of time for chat, and everyone remarked on having seen parts of Lindow Common that they hadn't been to before, and had enjoyed the experience.
Many thanks to Kate for choosing the walk and sharing it with us:-)

Thistle thrashing at Lyme Park on Sunday 24th July 2016

High on a hill was a lonely ranger

Yodel ay ee yodel ay ee yodel ay hee hoo

Loud was the voice of the lonely ranger

Yodel ay ee yodel ay ee yodel oo


Actually, the ranger wasn't lonely at all, as he was accompanied by eight members of MNTV. The high hill in question was in Lyme Park, overlooking the Cage and with a fine view to Manchester and the Cheshire plain. Just below us was the Deer Sanctuary, where groups of stags and groups of hinds eyed us suspiciously.

We worked our way across quite a swathe of ground, slashing thistles, which might otherwise take over.

The ground was quite uneven, but only one of us managed to fall over (and was unhurt, except possibly for pride). It was a warm day, but cloudy. Sun cream and insect repellent came in handy and the lemon cake went down well.

Mick
(photo's by Adrian)

Fence work on the Styal estate on Sunday 17th July 2016

Five of us were working on the latest acquisition at Bank House farm on the Styal estate, taking out an old and decrepit fence so that it can be replaced by a new one at a later date.

We stacked the old material near to the path and in the afternoon we carried it down to the former yard at the farm to await collection and disposal.

The new fence will be installed by contractors and will only roughly follow the old line.
The field is of conservation importance as it is an unimproved meadow and will one day be let for grazing.
Text and photo's provided by Adrian

Drainage and tree guard painting at Hare Hill on Sunday 10th July 2016

Five of MNTV’s finest ensured that quality made up for quantity as Adrian, Christine, Jenny, Lisa and Matt turned out on a cloudy morning to carry out two different tasks at Hare Hill.

 

John Mann has made the short trip from Dunham Massey to take up the ranger’s role, and one of his tasks is to identify the many Victorian culverts that run under Hare Hill’s parkland, and find the site of any collapses which he suspects are to blame for some of the site’s drainage problems. We dug down at three points where John had already found collapses, removed the broken stone lids of the culverts and replaced them with large concrete slabs. Hopefully these will bear the weight of the cows that roam freely across the parkland, and are the cause of the previous collapses.

  

Meanwhile we also tried to find the line of a side culvert that could be causing flooding in the garden of one of the old gatehouses. This involved pushing a spike into the ground – this slid in easily where there was just grass, but made a hollow ‘thunk’ where it hit the top of a culvert or drainage pipe. It was a hit and miss process (literally!) and not made easy by the stone backfill that has been thrown in on top of previous works.

 

While the replacement of the concrete slabs went well, we couldn’t follow the side culvert back to its intersection with the main system, as the line started to go too deep under a hilly section and we’d have had to excavate something akin to a hobbit hole to get to the depth of the drain. We all enjoyed our work though – getting into a culvert in some wellies, carrying a spade, is the only thing that Adrian enjoys almost as much as a food break, so by lunchtime he was very happy!

 

Starting work on the tree guards

 

Lunch was taken under threat of a soaking – we had one short sharp shower in the morning, but the afternoon forecast promised much more wet stuff. As it happened, it cleared up and we enjoyed sunshine during our second task, which was to paint some of the tree guards. A bit of gymnastics was needed for those painting the inside of the guards to get in and out without getting themselves covered in green! We managed to do four guards in total, including the one that surrounds the tree we planted in 2008 in memory of our former chairman Jonathan Prance. His tree is flourishing, and its guard now looks the part too.

 

Jonathan's tree guard gets some TLC

 

Balsam bashing at Erddig on Sunday 3rd July

A trip to Erddig (near Wrexham) today to pull up Himalayan balsam.
There were eleven volunteers from MNTV, along with three from Chester/Merseyside.
We enjoyed warm, sunny weather whilst making big inroads into a swathe of balsam on the banks of the Black Brook which runs through the estate.

Getting to the site involved wading across the stream or crossing by improvised pallet pontoon. No-one fell in, but there were several wet feet.

The ranger was busy with a chainsaw in the same area - clearing some trees and low branches. Himalayan balsam prefers shade, so the extra light should play a part as well.
Mick.