Seven of us turned out on a soggy morning. Reece, Ian, Steve, Dave, Martin, Marcus, and Paul. Rain was threatening and the forecast didn’t look good, but the only actual drops of rain were from what was held in the tree canopy as we started to shake it.

We set up camp fully prepared for a good old soaking.

Thankfully, the rain didn’t come, well, it did, but just a little later than the forecast. This allowed us to go into proper lumberjack mode and start to thin the trees out.

We want every tree to have a distance of between 2 to 2.5 metres between its neighbouring trees. This allows so much more light to get into the understory, and allows the trees to stop fighting for the light by rushing upwards, or growing at funny angles, and just slowly put on girth and become decent upright specimens. And it allows for everything to just breathe a bit, rather than being so tightly knotted and dense.

We have been advised by the Forestry Commission to cut the trees as low to the ground as possible. By break time we were all feeling it in our arms, shoulders, and backs.

Being the first workday of the month, bacon batches were the order of the day. The lads say they like their bacon crispy…

I think our little stove delivered, and thank-you to an anonymous buy-me-a-coffee donator who sponsored our brunch.

We carried on chopping and cutting.

And the sunlight started to stream in. You can see how the trees are growing at odd angles here. They will need to come out, sadly.

With about half an hour to go, we realised that we had a bit of a problem. In our haste to cut all the trees down, we had blocked the path and had to quickly clear it.

Thankfully, we just about managed it. A lesson for next week, maybe. We cleared about 200 metres, which is 50 metres more than we had planned, however, there are bits that we need to go back to.

It tells me that the plan is doable, which left me with a good feeling.

Afterwards I had to dart up to the park bench that Jacquie had kindly given us. A rather naughty squirrel had decided to wrench in from the concrete fixings and throw it down the bank.

Thankfully, a friend of Jacquie, who walks his dog along the path and is called Geoff, could not bear for Jacquie to see what had become of her generous donation, so he is going to recover the bench, rebuild it, and put it somewhere where people might appreciate it.

Thank you, Geoff. Proper super-hero.

Whilst I was down that end, I did a quick bit of work on one of our picnic benches. Someone has tried to move it, or just wear-and-tear.. But it needed quick action before bits started to go missing.

The bench gets to live another day.

You might be thinking that my day ended here, with a warm glow in my heart. It didn’t. The rain that was forecast at 10 am and made us put up our gazebo cover thingy…

…suddenly started, and boy-oh-boy, it just didn’t stop!!

Our Berrybanks pond filled up and then overflowed!!

Because we improved the drainage, the overflow will be gone in no time. Beforehand it would have flooded the path for weeks.

Here is a little YouTube of the pond doing its thing.

That’s about it for this week. Lots of stuff happening over the rest of this week, and the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Until next time!

Paul