Rhody bash at Lyme Park, Disley on Sunday 13th August 2017

This Sunday's workday was at Lyme Park, cutting rhododendron in Hampers Wood. 
When the park had fallow deer, this had been their enclosure, but only a small, fenced off part of the wood called Fallow Deer Grove remains as a reminder of their former presence.

Tools and safety talk before we got started.

For the eleven volunteers the day was a mixture of work, sunshine through the trees and wildlife. This included:
A buzzard
A frog
A sparrowhawk
A fox (just the back legs and tail seen)
Lots of flies
The least popular being the flies, which found something interesting in the spot where we had our lunch. Otherwise this was ideal as it was a spot where the forest school had set up log seating. There was evidence of other wildlife. The two stags which have managed to get into the wood and have so far evaded the rangers' efforts to chase them out again had left trails and some fresh poo. There was also a large hole uncovered as the rhody was cleared, which was believed to contain a badger, and almost ended up containing a volunteer.

Artistic shot of the fire!

We cleared a lot of rhody as we could continue to cut it down after we had stopped feeding the fire. The fires we have need to die down sufficiently before we leave and this generally means no more rhododendron cut as we don't want to leave piles of handy firewood around near a smouldering fire, encouraging someone to get the fire going again later. This wasn't a problem in Hampers Wood as there is no public access so we could merrily cut and leaves the piles for another group to burn.

Lunch time!

Text from Mick. Photo's from Adrian.