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.