Clumber Park weekend 21-22 May 2011

Six volunteers spent the weekend at Clumber park, arriving on Friday and leaving after early in Sunday afternoon.

The warden left a note that there would be a pub quiz starting at 8 in the estate's social club, so we ate promptly - home made quiches, salads, french bread, before an advance party of four went off by car to enter the quiz. The last two walked over some time later, and watched - the quiz was well under way when they arrived but teams were strictly restricted to 4. Eventually we walked back in the dark leaving the car at the social club and relying on night sight rather than torches. This was a new experience for some of the volunteers - if their torches hadn't gone flat - I doubt if we could have persuaded them to keep them switched off - they were a little surprised when I got a torch out to find the keys!

After quite a late night, we started with breakfast including crispy (burnt?) bacon butties. We were ready on time, and met the Wardens. The task was coppicing willow along the lakeside where live willow matting had been used to control erosion. A secondary task was planting prunings in the gaps to reinforce the bank. Though we left that for Sunday morning as the ground was very hard and we needed a metal bar to make planting holes.

I took a lift back to the base camp in the car left the night before as I had misjudged the depth at the edge of the lake and filled my wellingtons! P was more sensible and borrowed waders.

Dinner took a while to organise as everything was prepared from scratch a home made garlicy cheesy spread starter with salad and toasted french bread, herby bread crumb coated chicken breasts, with carrot, potato and cauliflower followed by strawberries and ice cream.

We played some games and then went to bed a bit earlier than the previous night. We didn't get up as efficiently on the second morning and were running a little late when the wardens arrived. Perhaps the breakfast was too simple - croissants, toast, cereals etc!

We planted the prunings and then did a litter pick around the lake, before packing up, cleaning up the base camp and going home.

25th AGM on Monday 16th May 2011

Summary of AGM from Daniel:

We held our AGM yesterday evening in the Norcliffe Chapel meeting room.
Sixteen members attended plus wardens Shane Bates (High Peak) and Tim
Bowyer (Styal).

Seven people were elected to the committee for the coming year: Daniel
Black, Sue Bonner, Denise Clark, Philippa Greaves, Gordon Irons, Adrian
Potts and Charlie Spiller.

Long service awards were presented by Shane to Hazel Pryor (25 years)
and Adrian Potts (20 years). Well done to both of them.

At the interval we caught up over tea, coffee and homebaked cakes and
biscuits.

After the AGM Shane gave us a very interesting talk about the history of
Kinder Scout since its acquisition by the NT in 1982. Current work is
focused on stabilising the peatbogs by planting heather and cotton grass
and preventing peat runoff by gulley blocking. Watch out for details of
the 30th birthday celebrations next year!

Dunham Massey 15 May 2011

Ten of our volunteers turned out and spent the day working with Doug the "carreership" (trainee) warden cutting and burning Rhododendron Ponticum near the car park. There was some drizzle but we were well sheltered among trees and screened from most of the breeze by the valley we were working in. When people ventured out into the carpark they reported back that it was "far wetter out there" - so we had a good day.

We cut the smaller trunks, and stripped the branches off the larger ones with bow saws, dragged away the debris to the fire and burnt it - the fire was hot and didn't produce much smoke - Doug checked a couple of times to make sure we were not smoking the public on the "moat path" - the main path from the car park to the house.

A number of the "plants" had very large trunks which had to be cut by Doug with a chain saw - once we were well out of the way.

There are three photographs - before during and after. Though the cleared area did extend a little further left out of the frame.

Burton Wood - 8 may 2011

Thanks to Daniel for this text.

Four of us travelled to Burton Wood today and spent the day rhodybashing with warden Phil and eight Chester NT Volunteers. It was our first visit to this part of the Wirral since November. Early heavy showers gave way to bright sunshine and the wood looked resplendent in its vivid spring green colours. Denis (Chester) got a roaring fire going and all the cuttings were burned by 4pm. Conversation topics around the fire and at breaktimes covered squirrel trapping, 1960's soft drink bottles, the Yorkshire Three Peaks walk and the Royal Wedding.

As well as the "heavy" rhoddi bashing about half the combined group spent the day roaming the wood, hunting down "regrowth". Theory is that by pulling out what roots we can, and stripping the regrowth from the ones we can't - we will gradually wear down the plants and eventually eliminate them completely.

The first photo is blurred (camera shake) and could have done with a back light adjustment, however the "trees" in the background including the ones with pink flowers are the main Rhoddadendrons being bashed - I've included this photo despite its poor quality to try to show the size of these plants..... ~18 feet high.

Mam Tor / Edale " Mega" weekend

15 volunteers including four who live in Ireland! stayed for the weekend at the "Dale Head" base camp near Edale.  We were joined during the days by local NT staff and volunteers and one or two of our own group who came out either on the Saturday or the Sunday.  Our volunteers gave about 165 volunteer hours to the Trust during the weekend - though the exact figure will depend on how you calculate breaks!  We spent the days working in a patch of woodland near Mam Tor.

It was a complicated worksite with different groups doing different things.  Most people changed tasks periodically.

Alex (the careership warden) allocated our tasks which were - collecting and burning brash, pruning, measuring, and collecting harvested timber.   The staff with the appropriate knowledge and training were felling trees, taking the side branches off, cross cutting the trunks into logs, and driving the "soft track"

The net result for the wood we were in (just up hill from the National Trust Mam Tor car park) were as follows.

1) Some selected trees (mostly pine)were felled, and converted into logs. These logs were to be a specific length that can be transported by helicopter - hence the volunteers measuring. Eventually these logs will be used to block gulleys in the peat - helping to control erosion, elsewhere in the High Peak Estate. The logs were loaded by volunteers into the soft track - driven into open ground, unloaded and stacked to await collection by the helicopter.

2) Volunteers with bow saws pruned off the lower branches of standing trees up to head height. A task sometimes known as brashing - This allows trees to be inspected more easily, allows a little more light down to ground level and makes the wood look far more "open".

3) The felling and pruning generates more side branches / dead wood on the ground "brash" that is normal / required for biodiversity - so a proportion of this material was dragged to a fire and burnt.

4) Some brash was left in habitat piles.

Bollard straightening... 3 April 2011 Dunham Massey

In the deer park at Dunham Massey, near the stables restarant there is a line of octagonal posts, with chains along the top. There is a theory that they date from arround the time that the National Trust took over the maintainance of the park.

Children play on the chains and over time a number of the posts have begun to lean in odd dirrections. So the task for today was to correct as far as possible these posts, without making too much of a mess.

Seven volunteers turned out, took the turf off arround the posts, dug down 18-24 inches, straightened the posts - and in some cases moved them back into line, and then back filled the holes firming the soil in layers. We are told that there is evidence to suggest that this boundary was at some stage marked by wrought iron "parkland" fence, looking at the layout on the ground we suspected that this would have been curved.

The weather was in general favourable, though we ducked into the mill at lunch time to avoid a heavy slow moving shower.

The Holly and the Ivy a little out of season....?? Styal 27 March 2011

Five volunteers turned me up in the main car park at Styal Country Park / Quarry Bank Mill, and spent the day working in and around a small quarry, situated in the slope between the car park and the mill. We have done some work here before clearing assorted debris, small shrubs and Rhodi. Today there were various tasks, clearing ivy from the stump and the bottom 6 feet of tree to its left in the first picture. Removing selected small holly trees, clearing some of the felled timber (and converting the smaller bits into usable firewood for a domestic grate), and installing a three wire fence along the top of the face.


The fencing was made more "interesting" as the plan was to retain as much of the holly undergrowth around it as possible. The holly screens the top of the quarry and naturally keeps people out of harms way, but did complicate the task a little. A safety barrier was placed along the highest section of edge before we started work, along with high vis tape to help us keep track of where we were working.

Manoeuvring a large coil of wire through the bushes while keeping track of exactly where the edge was took a while but was managed safely. The risks were actually well controlled as the fence was a couple of feet back fro the edge and this quarry apears to be quite stable - I guess due to the shelter from the trees preventing frost damage. The other trick we found was to tie spare jumpers round some of the holly bushes to keep them out of the way!

The third photograph is view along the fence, looking from the left hand edge of the 2nd photo towards the right hand edge of the first. At this point the quarry face is merging into a steep holly covered bank.