Rocking and rolling in Folly Copse

Good outlook over Cats Abbey buildings and 'water meadows'

Folly Copse thinning close to boundary wall

Sherborne was bathed in sunshine today with a continution of thinning in Folly Copse, with James,  forming the mornings task. It proved to be quite interesting since several of the felled trees needed encouragement to reach the ground. So both tree levers for 'rolling' the trunks, some 'levering' using a convenient bit of cord wood and some nifty chainsawing from James were all used to good effect to build up the much needed cord wood piles. The only downside to the days work was the lack of wildlife on show, so I was only too happy to spend a few minutes spoiling Pepper before returning to Cheltenham and the afternoons walk with Ollie.

The good and bad {Fracking} in Martin Harpers blog , the ugly could apply to a number of things associated with Nature conservation: Lead ammunition , Truss on Bovine TB amongst many {Owen Patterson was bad but...}, Driven grouse shooting.

The Dark Knight awakens

No horse for me and the one highland cow had smaller horns

Pleased to see Maurice back with us in fairly good shape and ready for the December 2015 bat count. Mike and James with me formed a formidable Bat team with Maurice raring to go at the 'bat cave'. The outside ambient temperature was a 'toasty' 14-15 degrees and inside the temperatures were on the high side  at 11 degrees {norm being 7-10}. The lesser horseshoes appreciate the warmer temperatures and 119 were comfortably settled in their winter roost. With the Kennels at 3, Bothy at 21 {record}, cellar at 3, this gave a total of 146 probably close to the norm {we missed December last year but November 2014 yielded 138}.

Had some fun closer to home this week as I had to shape up as a cowboy to round up some stray calves. They had broken through a fence line damaged by a fallen willow and were {4 of them} exploring the path near Merlin way and the bottom end of Burrows playing field. Olly and I bumped into them on the path and as Olly wasn't helping too much I took him home before trying to get some help. As I couldn't locate the farmer I was lucky enough to get help from the Cheltenham local Ranger and after a struggle we got the calves back into Lotts meadow where the herd were happily grazing. The farmer, who had to come from some way outside Cheltenham, eventually turned up and did some running repairs on the damaged fence line. So here's hoping no more adventures from the plucky calves.

Update on 'Lotts meadow' cows today which shows the farmer's repairs were unsuccessful. This time while walking Ollie was confronted with a large horned cow running along the path connecting with Merlin way, then was pursued down Merlin way by another adult cow with a policeman and small crowd watching! I was trying to protect Ollie and not too worried by the cows. Farmer still not appeared and half his herd is still roaming around Burrows playing fields. Here's hoping they don't get bored and decide to investigate Moorend Grove.

Today Monday 21 'the longest night' didn't start to well as I had to encourage the Lotts cows from my front garden, at 5:30 am back onto Burrows playing field. Yes they made it to Moorend Grove and the amusing 'escapes' of the past week are becoming a pain, here's hoping the farmer gets his act together soon!!

Yo Ho Ho, sleigh but no horse power!

Picardy and Commons border 2015 xmas tree collection

Joined up with James at Sherborne on Wednesday, Mike away on a course, with the mornings mission to retrieve Xmas trees from the Commons. The good news was that the 'trees' were already felled and ready for collection from the Commons area. The bad news was there would be no tractor available to help this year and the location of the felled trees was sketchy. The happy recipients of this years NT Xmas trees were to be the Church at Northleach, the Sherborne house courtyard and Sherborne school.

Always good to drive down to the Commons near the water meadows area and the weather conditions were good, being warm with fairly dry ground conditions. So although it proved tricky to locate the site of the xmas trees it was a pleasant experience to scout around parts of Picardy and Commons in our search. We also had the benefit of positioning the 4x4 as close to the tree site as possible since the usual boggy conditions were absent. However the distance to the felled trees proved lengthy enough especially in the more muddy parts of the 'ride' and carrying a 14' tree {not the 18' tree of last year} was challenging. We did manage to load the trailer with 2 trees and transport both back to the estate offices safely. As a bonus on the return journey we were favoured by a herd of fallow deer which dashed across the ride in front of us and a greater spotted woodpecker near the house up by Northfields barn.