Heightened security at Dovers Hill?

New feature at Dovers Hill

A surprise greeted Martin and I as we arrived at Dovers Hill this week for some fencing, strimming and general maintenance.  An impressive structure,  Camelot like, dominated the landscape ready for the Olimpicks on Friday. Resisted the temptation to climb the ladders to the battlements and proceeded on down to Lynches wood. Here I set to strimming the woodland paths, needed the metal blade as the vegetation was quite dense.  I always enjoy being in this wood given the mixture of beech, larch, sweet chestnut , ash and oak. Plant and insect life also good with fern, cardinal beetles and orchids. Slight setback on the work planned as 'I forgot ' to pack the drill for the steps repair,  sigh from Martin, but I still enjoyed the day.

Lodge Park pond, there's life but not as ...

Ewe Pen Barn, 2 men went to mow..

Spent this week with Mike on ensuring Lodge Park, Sherborne village and Ewe Pen Barn grass & verge areas were in presentable state for the up coming Bank / Jubilee holidays. Benefited from M&Ms strimmer training which meant with tuition I combined my immense mowing skills with new strimming ones. On another hot day we were pushed to complete the work especially since Simon {of 3 men went to mow fame} was absent enjoying himself in France. Couple of highlights {rests between work} were the buttercups carpeting the Lodge deer park and the pond at the front of the Lodge. I spotted a pied wagtail by the pond but although nice to see it wasn't this that had Mike and I gazing into the pond's hidden depths. On close inspection the pond's secret citizens were revealed with water boatmen , BBC dragonfly, newts and tadpoles. Ok perhaps its the boy in us but we could have spent a good while observing if not for the work still to do! A good but hot day and somewhat a relief to me all tools still working {after some previous stirling work by Mike on the Honda mowers}.

Power rangers meet 'leisure' furlong

M&M unfazed by size of task

On full power helped by tractor

Not much 'leisure' down in Leasow Furlong where most of the work this week took place.  Mission was to make safe and prepare this area of Sherborne woodland for a local scout troop camping trip later on this month. Not much time so the full team,  {rangers Mike and Martin plus volunteers Simon and me}, combined to get it done. Armed with chainsaws, pole saw, strimmer and for extra power the tractor we set about clearing the numerous fallen larch, which were casualties of the April storms. Was worth the days effort spread over two days, extra revenue from the fallen larch and a good looking & safe area for the scout camp. With the sunshine we were blessed with, its safe to say we all would have enjoyed some  actual leisure time at this location. Lucky scouts!

which topping would u go for

As we finished early afternoon Martin and I shot over to Dovers Hill for a quick chat with the olimpicks organiser. Bit surprised by the local advertising displayed on the NT fence, although agreed with its message for careless dog owners.   Helpful discussion regards the installation of the 'Beacon' hopefully common sense will see this approved and in time for the start of the games scheduled for beginning of June. Completed the day with a visit to Littleworth wood where we made safe and cleared woodland paths blocked by fallen trees. Busy week, glad for the break before next weeks surprises. May even try out a pizza. 

Batmen and Robin...

The Bat cave/residence!,  postcode a secret

A surprise from Mike {Batman 1} when he and Morris,  the North Cotswold caver and batman extraordinaire took me to the local Quarry 'cave' system this morning. I remained {as Robin !}  as the safety man outside whilst they conducted the bat count inside. I got my chance after the official count, to explore the inside with Morris as my guide. Hugely impressed to see the lesser horseshoe bats [~100] which looked like 'black leaves' suspended from the cotswold stone ceilings. Also one of the bats was clearly aware of the warm temperature outside and was flying around. Oddly there was also a single greater horseshoe bat happy to roost alongside its cousins. It transpires that this bat conservation project of the NT and the Bat Trust has kept Mike and Morris busy for over 8 years which included a good deal of 'building' work carried out by the two of them to shore up the cave system. A cracking effort. We finished this part of the day by examining other bat roosts in various Sherborne buildings/cellars. Small number of lesser horseshoes were spotted but come the spring these roosts will be busier as the bats from the quarry roost make their migration from the main winter roost.

Just a days work for super volunteer?

Rest of the day with Mike and previous day with Martin was on 'thinning' activities at Sherborne east belt and Dovers hill! Always difficult to predict what may happen on any given day with a ranger and this week certainly illustrated this. For example with Martin we visited Snowshill first thing where Linda the head gardener provided a couple more jobs for Martins long list i.e. planning for new drystone wall and removal of some difficult tree roots.   Added  to this was the job of cutting up a large Mulberry tree root which I and L &L {Linda and Lisa assistant gardener} had dug out over the last 2 days.

Having done this martin & I  moved onto Dovers hill where some early 'olympicks' preparation was done to allow the audience increased viewing for these original local games! More conventional thinning took place in lynch wood where in  particular a very accurate tree felling was carried out by Martin. With buckets of skill and little room for error she fell without damaging any of the trees in the fall line. I would have awarded Martin the gold but Mike just pipped him with an even finer { even less margin for error} tree felling feat in the east belt today. Either way M&M certainly make tree felling look easy {it isn't!} but of course the real work falls to me in stacking and clearing up the tons of wood all ready for blocking, splitting and selling!.

39 Steps ....

If its worth doing its worth doing well, not a bad rule to follow especially where conservation and longevity are concerned. My fleeting experience in  drystone walling provides a good example of this so its especially pleasing, given no act of god etc that the Leckhampton 'wall', could still be doing its job several hundred years from now.

Crickley hill

The basic fact that work in the countryside is never ending means that u seldom have the luxury , unless H&S applies, to revisit work  so poor application is costly and unsightly. That being the case even the best construction has a limited lifetime and mother nature will require u to revisit eventually. So in 2011, after Martin had secured funds from the Cotswold Way [team linked with National trails, was under Natural England funding now under AONB?],  I was exposed to 'step' maintenance in woodland at Dovers Hill. It wasn't until we got to the site where the work was to take place the i realised this was going to take a while. The steps form part of the path through the woodland and were in three parts on a particularly steep  gradient. In all 80 steps! would require replacing those in the worst state taking priority. Given the tree roots, rocky ground and the need to master Martin's new approach to implementing steps in this terrain 6-8 steps per day was the going rate. This was going to be a longterm endeavour but my hammering skills were certainly going to improve! At least the steps in worst repair have been replaced and we didn't have to wait long before they came  through their first test, courtesy of local walkers.