I have been banging on about “scallops” for ages now. I revisited my woodland management guides and when they talk about scallops along a path edge, they are talking about 50 metres in length and 15 metres deep.

I think what we are doing is making pockets, or bays, which is still good because it creates a wavy edge to the path which is great for wildlife, but maybe we need to move away from the term “scallop” or actually make some bigger scalloped areas where clearing out is done on a rotational basis?

These images are from the Butterfly Conservation website which can be seen here.

So it’s all a bit confusing and a bit contradictory with wildflower glades needing to be cleared off every year, scallops cleared every eight years and bramble cleared every third year!!! No wonder my head hurts!

Today we cleared out the huge wildflower glade that is the centrepiece of the whole greenway.

Me being an utter clot forgot to take photos after we had finished. I will get them tomorrow when I’m putting up the birdboxes that have fallen.

[Photos of clearing added in – hard to believe that this is full of wildflowers in the summer]

We can now see the grass margin on each side of the centre path. What we need to do is add a zone between the short grass and the scrub, which is longer grass and full of wildflowers. The good news is that we have a whole heap of time to create this, and in some areas we already have. We just need to remember not to strim right up to the scrub edge in the spring and summer next year.

The coffee and cookie break was very welcome this week. Raking all the cuttings is the worst job ever.

For me, this is one of the best bits. We chat about stuff and it’s just that simple human interaction without egos, targets or any sort of hierarchy getting in the way. Just a bunch of folk rubbing along and having a laugh. So simple yet so good.

Our base camp is starting to get a bit overloaded but I kid you not, there is a load of other stuff that I would like to bring, but we don’t have the capacity.

Which leads us nicely into Tool Talk Wednesday – Everyone gets a bit irritated with me not cleaning the strimmers down after each workday, so I bought a brush.

To be honest, there is nothing worse than the smell of cut grass after it has gone past that euphoric freshly-cut smell. The wretch-inducing odour is awful, so I will gladly brush off our strimmers with our new “tool” and not be heaving and gagging, as the clumps of wet grass fall off the strimmers and take up residence in my car.

Here is a YouTube of the bit we did last week.

In my mind we need to get behind a few of those trees and bring them into play along the path.

We also did a litter-pick on the southern third and I was really pleased to see hardly any litter.

The path is a pleasure to walk and I really enjoyed wandering up and down. The width is really making a huge difference.

We have some incredibly exciting news hopefully in a week or two, and a curveball or three, so watch this space. Next week we’re at Potford Dam clearing out the wildflower glade and this Friday we are trying to connect the Right of Way through the woods to create circular routes. It should all come together next week.

Until then!

Paul