Happy Christmas!

NT Head Office sent the group a Christmas card and message of thanks for our support:

Images from some of our recent and ongoing fundraising projects:

The Lake District, The White Cliffs of Dover, Stowe Landscape Garden and Snowdonia.

Work in the kitchen garden at Biddulph Grange Garden on 16th December 2018

Five of us went to Biddulph Grange Garden today for our last workday of 2018.  The forecast freezing weather, ice rain and winds never arrived and we had a very enjoyable day working with gardener Leslie Hurst in the kitchen garden.

We tackled and completed two jobs:

1.  Adrian, Andy and David put in a beech hedge.  They delineated the hedgeline with long thin wooden planks, screwed them together, prepared the soil in between and then planted beech saplings at 18 inch intervals.

2.  Tim and Daniel removed the grass from around the base of 16 fruit trees in the small orchard adjacent, constructed wooden squares around each tree and then planted 15 or 16 daffodil bulbs in each square and covered the bulbs with mulch.

At elevenses we washed down Daniel's Christmas-tree-shaped chocolate fudge cake with mugs of hot apple juice infused with Christmas spices courtesy of Leslie.

Lunch was taken in the volunteers' room below the museum.  On the message board we read that Biddulph has had 100k visitors in the year to 31 October versus a target for the whole year of 108k.  Next year's target is 118k.  Andy and I scanned our membership cards as we left to add two to the tally!  Certainly, Biddulph was busy today - there was a Santa Trail for children to follow that led them round the garden and to Father Christmas in the house.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our members and thank you for your hard work and support this year.  Here's to fun and friendship in 2019!

Daniel Black
MNTV Chairmen

Work programme for 2019

I wrote this on the train as I headed home after a fabulous Christmas weekend in the Lake District.  Where were you?!  As 2018 comes to an end, it's time to think about 2019 and what wonders we have in store.  Firstly, we have three weekends planned for your delight.  Our Spring Weekend comes in April and we are visiting Buckden in Wharfedale on the weekend of 7 April.  If you would like to come on this weekend then please let us know as soon as possible as the basecamp only holds 13 and we currently have eight definite bookings and several more probables.  We are sharing this weekend with the Merseyside group.  Our other weekends are Summer in Snowdonia on the weekend of 14 July based at Hendre Isaf basecamp near Betws-y-Coed and Christmas is at Calke Abbey near Derby on the weekend of 8 December.  Look out for emails about these weekends at a later date.

So those are our weekends, what about the workdays?  Well, I'm pleased to announce that the worksites for the whole of 2019 have been confirmed and boy have we got a programme and a half lined up for you!

Our first workday is on 6 January at Alderley Edge.  Ranger Tim Ryan (ex-MNTV) has asked for our help with some hedgelaying.  We'll also be back there at the end of January and in February too to carry on with this task.  Our first longer distance day comes in the form of a trip back to Erddig on 3 February and we'll be back there in May and September too.

In March after roughly four years away we are returning to the seaside and to the sands of Formby.  We will also be travelling there twice more in 2019.  In April, as well as our trip to Wharfedale, we travel to Thurstaston on the Wirral and to Speke.  This will be our only visit to Speke in the year so don't miss it.

In May we have the first of our special workdays at Lyme Park. You may remember a while ago I emailed you all asking if there were any particular tasks you wanted to do as Lyme had asked us the same question.  This month we have our first Lyme Special: on 12 May we are joining the Ranger team doing a bird survey.

In June we have our first visit of the year to Biddulph and Hardcastle Crags, our second Lyme Special (planting bedding plants in the garden) and we will also be at Hayfield doing some bracken bashing.  July brings us the Summer in Snowdonia weekend and our third Lyme Special of either a butterfly survey or thistle thrashing.

August brings the fourth Lyme Special and a job that our volunteers have been keen to take on since last doing it in 2009 at Hayfield …drystone walling!  September brings us a first as we join the Merseyside group at Chirk Castle near Wrexham.

In October we have another first as we head to north Manchester to find out what's going on at Gawthorpe Hall or the Stubbins Estate.  November brings us Bosley Cloud and our last trip to Formby for the year.

December brings us the Christmas at Calke Abbey weekend and we finish the year with another visit to Bosley Cloud on 15 December.

The programme for the first part of the year will be up on the What’s On page of our website in the New Year.  Keep your eyes on the website as more dates will get added.

We hope to see as many of you as possible on each workday.  If you have signed up but not yet joined us on a workday then let 2019 be the year!

Ally Hardy

*CANCELLED* Workday at Alderley Edge on 9th December 2018

Today's scrub bashing at Alderley Edge was cancelled on Saturday afternoon because of the low number of people who said they'd be coming - likely due to the poor weather forecast and the possibility of the day being cancelled because of forecast high winds.

Hopefully the same fate won't befall next Sunday's workday at Biddulph Grange Garden, our last of 2018.

Daniel

'Gaslight' at MADS theatre on 6th December 2018

Six of us (Andy, Sue B, Daniel, Neil, Linda and Sue D) went to the theatre in Macclesfield tonight to see MADS's production of Patrick Hamilton's 'Gaslight'.  We enjoyed their performance of 'Season's Greetings' so much last December that we had thought ever since of returning to see this year's Christmas production.

The play is a thriller set in Victorian London:

"Despite seemingly having every advantage and an outwardly doting husband, Bella is being driven slowly mad... but can the cause of her madness truly be her husband?  What is the dark, terrible, secret lurking in his past, and where does he disappear to each evening?  Left alone in her dingy parlour with the gaslight periodically dimming and the shadows surrounding her, is Bella really going insane?  Does police detective Rough hold all the answers?  Will anybody be able to save her from her darkened fate..."

Before the play, four of us met Jenny and Ian at Kandy, a Sri Lankan restaurant on Mill Street, and enjoyed a delicious meal.

Christmas in Cumbria 2018

Nine go to Cumbria: Wet, Wet, Wet feat. Santa

Starring: Matt, Lisa, Ally, Neil, Tim, Sue, Pip, Mick, Martin and Ranger Philippa

Guest Starring: Ranger Bethan

In the run up to our annual Christmas Weekend it had been a very wet few weeks, but that didn’t put off ten volunteers from signing up.  It turned out to be the wettest weekend in a long time.  The weekend starts here!

It started with my trip south on the train to Oxenholme where Sue and Neil met me and we headed to basecamp.  En route we discovered that the three of us had forgotten to look up the safe code for the keys to get into the basecamp, all thinking the others will have done it so as Ally tried to log into Dropbox to get the document we drove under cloudy skies closer and closer to the basecamp.  With the signal not too good we couldn’t get the document we were after so were relieved to find Philippa in the office to ask her.  We were joined later by Tim, Pip and Mick and it was then we discovered that our tenth member Nasrin would not be joining us as she had a bad cold.  We hope you feel better now Nasrin.  We adorned the basecamp in Christmas decorations which included lots of colourful lights winking and blinking at you wherever you looked and many sparkling bits of tinsel.  At 6pm we headed out to the Outgate Inn near Hawkshead for our evening meal.  Upon returning we found the final three members of our work party (Matt, Lisa and Martin) had joined us having travelled up after work.

Saturday dawned wet and Ranger Philippa met us at the basecamp at 8.45am and helped herself to a cup of tea whilst we finished getting ready.  We set off at about 9.30 after Lisa had a hunt for her car keys – always check the jacket you were wearing last night!  Our worksite today was Fell Foot Park on the southern shores of Windermere.  It was here we met Ranger Bethan who works at Fell Foot and was very pleased to have some help.  Our job was digging out brambles in an area next to the exit road.  Easier said than done!  Bethan wanted them and their roots dug out.  Some of the roots were really quite long and tough and I’m afraid to say some of the roots broke so the brambles might be back next year.  Having been to collect the tools from their shed on wheels we spent the morning digging away in the rain.

At lunchtime Matt and Lisa left the worksite in order to go and prepare dinner and the rest of us, as promised by the Rangers, headed for cover to eat our sandwiches.  The lunch room was rather posh and new looking.  It was in fact the clubhouse of the boating club at Fell Foot so we took off our wet waterproofs and boots and sat at a table (!!!) whilst we watched the rain come down outside.  After lunch, having put our boots and waterproofs back on, we had the chance to change tasks.  Some did and some didn’t.  Those who did went with Bethan.  She had a metal rod sticking out of the ground that she wanted to find out what it was so Martin, Tim and Neil went with her to see if they could help.  They dug down about 4 feet and there was still 3 feet left to dig down so they admitted defeat and returned to where the rest of the group were still pulling up the brambles and it was still raining.  If anyone knows what is at the end then please let us know and we can pass it on to the correct person.  We carried on with the brambles task getting really quite muddy and at about 3pm called a halt to the day as we were wet, muddy and tired.  We packed up and headed for the warmth of the cars and back to basecamp.

That evening we dined on Roast Chicken.  The table groaned with pain as it was laden with food: there were two types of potatoes, five types of vegetables, pigs in blankets, gravy and stuffing!  Thank you and well done to Lisa and Matt for cooking it for us all.  Santa arrived on his sleigh and gave out the presents in his sack and we all got a present. I got some banana lights that I have stuck up in my kitchen and some Danish Traditional Butter Cookies.  A number of people got games so we broke with tradition and played Who am I? (Lisa’s present), The Music Quiz (Neil’s present) and Pub Quiz (Matt’s present).  We then decided it was time to go to bed!

Sunday morning, and today it was not conservation work we were doing it was clearing up basecamp and being tourists.  Whilst eating breakfast we spent some time watching the birdlife around the basecamp.  Sue got very excited at seeing the local woodpecker and jay along with many other finches and tits.  After breakfast we tidied up and some of us walked over to Hawkshead and others went by car because it was still raining or we had exerted ourselves a little too much the day before.  We visited the Christmas market.  Neil very kindly provided a shuttle service so we didn’t have to walk back in the rain to basecamp and it was getting late.  Once back Mick and Pip left and the rest of us had lunch, cleared up the last bits, packed the cars and headed home.  It was not a pleasant journey home down the M6 - the rain just kept on coming.  I can inform you however that on Monday whilst in the Manchester area I experienced a small amount of rain in the morning and then blue skies.  On Tuesday, when I left for Edinburgh the sunshine was out, there was some mist and fog patches on the way north but it was a beautiful day in Edinburgh city centre when I got back.  It’s Wednesday now and you guessed it, it’s raining again!

My thanks must go to Neil for my transport and to Matt and Lisa for their superb cooking.  I look forward to seeing you all again soon.

MNTV you were awesome. Let’s do it again!

Ally x