Christmas meal at the Moss Trooper in Timperley on Saturday 5th December 2015

Our annual Christmas weekend takes place at High Wray in Cumbria, but this year that meant that our intended base lay squarely in the path of Storm Desmond. The accompanying gales and flooding proved too powerful: Desmond triumphed over Santa, and Christmas was cancelled. Almost.

Hazel managed to secure a table at the Moss Trooper pub in Timperley, and eight of us managed to switch our plans to meet up for food, banter and Secret Santa.



Pip sported her best Christmas hat, but Mick had gone the whole hog, or should that be reindeer, by dressing as Rudolph, with antlers, red nose and fetching onesie.

The food was hearty, and was interspersed by use of the penguin skittles and quick-fire quiz that came from two of Secret Santa's parcels.

 

Penguin skittles

Not quite a full strike!

 It wasn't quite the Christmas we expected, and some people ended up missing out entirely, but we were glad that some of us had been able to salvage some MNTV festivities among the howling gales of winter.







Hedgelaying at Mount Farm (Alderley Edge) on 13 December 2015

Eight of us met at 9:30 in the main Alderley Edge NT car park for a day's hedgelaying.  The hedge was at Mount Farm, five minutes away by car share, on the way to Hare Hill.  We parked in the lane below the farm and beside the field with the hedge.

We had a decent day's weather and by the time we packed up at 3pm had laid 10 metres of hedge.  The technique is to trim the vertical trees, nick their trunks at the base then carefully bend the trunks, weave the lain trunks together and pin them in place with stakes.  We laid the hedge uphill to match the other section of hedge laid by another group last week.

The ground on the near side of the hedge was a quagmire in places and it was essential we all wore wellies.  It would have been impossible to work without them.  We had our tea breaks beside the cars because they were close by and the field was so wet.

Neil and Adrian persevered all morning trying to light a bonfire to burn our prunings but could not get it to catch.  They stopped trying after lunch and from then on piled our cuttings neatly beside the fire site ready for the next volunteer group to burn.

Daniel’s Christmas tree chocolate cake was demolished at elevenses.  He took a photo with it before it disappeared:

Daniel