02.11.10: Camel Trail. Grogley Halt - vegetation clearance and chipping. Please see post for 05.10.10
10.11.10: Holifield Farm, Gweek - hedgelaying and coppicing trees in an AONB.
This setting is where I completed my Midland Style hedgelaying training (final product shown in my photo below)and it was a really interesting, sunny and fresh day! The original hedge was youngish shrubs such as Holly and Blackthorn growing on top of a hedgebank. These needed to be hedgelayed to provide a stockproof fence. Hedgelaying involves 'bending' the original trees/shrubs at the bottom of their trunk by almost splitting around a third of the base of the trunk with a Billhook then bending the tree to the direction of the hedgelay and ensuring the split made with the Billhook is clean cut and slanted at an angle so that no water will settle in the new cut which could damage or diease the tree/shrub. It also involves tidying up the hedge and ensuring spikes and pokey twigs were cut off from the side facing the public pathway but ensuring they stayed put for the stockproof side of the hedge.
We were also coppicing trees here in some woodland and used the cut-offs for continuing the hedge where there were no original trees/shrubs such as Holly and Blackthorn. We needed stakes for the posts of the hedge so these needed to be crafted into a point at one end with the other end ready to be bashed in with a mallet and we needed the thin ,bendy branches to weave between the posts.
12.11.10: De Lank (quarry), Bodmin - tree coppicing ,felling, vegetation clearance.
The reason we were here today was to open up some space to let some light through to benefit potential habitats of the Pearl-bordered Fritillary butterfly and open up the pathway.
De Lank quarry is a working quarry in beautiful surroundings with the De Lank river cascading upstream of the quarry shown in the photo below.
We arrived at 9am and met the MP for North Cornwall , Dan Rogerson on site. He came along to observe conservation in action and got stuck in with scrub clearance and sawing trees!There was a lot of gorse and brambles to remove, as well as coppicing trees to open up the area. Tools used were slashers, loppers and bow saws.
17.11.10 and 23.11.10: Pendower, Gerrans Bay - path/step building in an AONB.
Cornwall Council had requested us to carry out some work along this coastal walk to improve access to the wider countryside and Local Green Space. Equipment needed included planks of wood, bow saws and carpenter saws, iron bars, tamper, mattocks loppers, spades, tape measure and a spirit-level.
We arrived here on the BTCV minibus after arriving on the ferry, what a lovely start to the day!
After unloading our equipment it was time to measure the proposed new pathway and cut the timber to size for the steps to be built. The steps were to be built up a very steep pathway and it was quite a hike to carry all of the equipment to the top, lucky we're all so energetic! We split into around 4 groups of 3, some cutting the wood down to size, and the rest working in sections from the top to the bottom of the path to make the steps. This involved digging out the mud to the correct width for the cut wood to go into, keeping each step around the same length and height and working with the natural curve of the path. The pictures below show a section of our work (and me!).
23.11.10: We were at Gerrans Bay again today finishing off the step-building, please see above task.
26.11.10: Beachsweep along Penhale Beach (MOD property).
As part of the Ministry Of Defences plan to help towards a greener environment they have requested BTCV to do many beachsweeps along Penhale. This is a beautiful beach with views that go on forever and sand-dunes that are SSSI and SAC. It was quite an interesting beachsweep again and we saw lots of dead piranhas along the tideline which was strange! We collected a lot of the usual nasty rubbish from the beach (please see beachsweep post on August 27th 2010) and also massive fishing nets which were so heavy to carry that 4 of us were needed but we were lucky that Beach Patrol were driving across the beach and put the nets on their tow bar to drag away! We collect the rubbish and take it back to the Vivaro to take all of the rubbish to be recycled at the recycling facilities at the local Tip and at the BTCV office for other projects.
