Spring is here!
God it’s been a long while since I posted on here!
I’ve been off work for 3 months and haven’t had my usual train journeys to keep this up to date – instead I’ve been doing stuff!
Going to try a different tack with this now though, Short and often I think. We’ll see of course, it might be another 3 months before I post anything.
I guess when I was posting before I was discovering a passion for nature that I didn’t know I had, and having had three months working in the park in all weathers (yes including the snow) I can say fairly categorically that not only do I have the passion but it much more consuming than I thought.
I’ve rediscovered a interest in bird watching (as I type this on the train we have just passed a buzzard), I can tell Cherry, Ash, Oak, Hawthorn and Elder apart – even in the winter! and I hate being indoors – I love walking! good really as I don’t get my licence back until June! And spring has really sprung, from the train, the fields are green (or yellow), the sun is shining when I leave for work and when I get home, and birds are fighting for attention by singing, fighting or showing off (we have just gone through Luton though and that’s just a normal Friday night there). And I’ve just seen golfers on the golf course.
At the park, it’s incredibly busy, it’s as if children have been hibernating, and they have all just woken up, all very nice of course and it’s wonderful that the park is busy and bringing in lots of money but I long for quiet of the winter mornings when no one else was around and I could fantasise that the park is all mine – still doing the lottery – maybe I’ll become one of those uber rich euro millions winners and can buy my own park. We are starting to arrive in London now, and that’s the self imposed limit on how long I am allowing to write these up. One last thought – the trees and ground inside London are covered in grime and dirt, am I really breathing that in?
Well somebody’s got to do it!
Do what! I hear you all shout – I’ll get to that later, Happy New Year to you all!
Believe it or not winter is normally a quiet time for visitors at the park, your surprised? I was too! who can deny the pleasures of walking along muddy paths on a cold rainy day, when you can’t see more than a foot in front of your face and hailstones are drilling pits into your skull. although to be honest days like that are rare in Irchester, often there aren’t any hailstones.
But this holiday season has been glorious, there was a slight blip before Christmas when the park was closed because of weather but as was most of the country we won’t go on too much about that, once the snow had passed we had dry (if cold) crisp days. which meant that the traditional holiday pursuits were pursued and canines across the country were dragged from their warm spots by the fire to go out into the cold, icy world for a walk because [enter name of pet here] just loves to play in the ice/snow/frozen lake…
I have my own theory about this of course, it is just a canine suicide attempt. Essentially Rover, who has been removed from the roaring fire he has just spent 20 minutes getting comfortable in front of, is dragged out into a cold forest. In my opinion Whatever we think, Dogs aren’t the most forward thinking of beasts, and secretly they are pretty pessimistic, generally the Wolf in them can’t believe the luck of falling in with a bunch of monkeys who insist on feeding them and giving them the best spot by the fire! So by the time Rover has jumped out of the car and bounded down the path into the meadow the realisation has finally come that you are going to dump him there in the wilderness to fend for himself. Not a game he wants to play! so suicide is the only option – diving headfirst into a frozen lake or snow is the attempted method – not very efficient I know but as noted above – not the best thinkers in the world.
Once the suicide attempt has failed, the dog is scared, and that results in a bodily response – the same one that we have when we are scared which brings me neatly on to my Sunday volunteering at the Park
Firstly let me introduce someone who has previously only been known by her Job Title (massive though that is). Ranger Helen. Ranger Helen is in charge of the park, and of the volunteers and nominally in charge of Millie the collie dog (who is the exception to the rule above, icy lakes for Millie are a challenge to be conquered). She is incredibly dedicated, full of energy, and an exceptional advertisement for the Ranger Service of Northamptonshire County Council, oh and a bit of a nutter! From now on she will be referred to as Ranger Helen.
So I arrived at ICP on Sunday morning awake and ready to face the day ahead, whatever it held for me. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, there was a chill in the air (the car thermometer said 0 degrees) but it wasn’t unpleasant, this was of course before the ‘Big Freeze’.
I was a little later than normal, it was gone 10 when I arrived, so I phoned Ranger Helen on her mobile to make sure that they weren’t out and about somewhere in the park. They weren’t, she told me that the other volunteer was just getting the Mule ready for us to go round the park and empty the bins.
Sounded like fun thought I – a lovely day for a drive around the park taking in the sights and sounds of the mid winter whilst we tidied up a little. So of course we got the kettle on. Ranger Helen provided me with a superb cup of tea (I won’t mention the cup she broke) in an insulated mug, that was going to keep my hands nice and warm and whilst I drank my tea and cogitated on the job in hand it slowly dawned on me… There are no litter bins in the park, or at least none that are maintained by the Rangers! So what did that mean – what possible bins could we be emptying.
Remember earlier I was talking about the holiday pastime? and how scared the little doggies were? and what they would do when they were scared? Well when they do what they do the responsible owner collects the output and deposits it in a bin, these bins over time get full and someone needs to empty them. Today it appears was our day. Yippee!
Not even Ranger Helen can make this job sound pleasant, but she tried, by explaining that any unpleasantness would be reduced as the contents of the bins would be frozen, possibly partly true but I’m fairly sure this stuff generates it’s own heat, and of course as we were in the mule and the tied up bags were in a trailer down wind of us, this at least was true, when we were moving.
There were of course benefits, we would be touring the whole park, and I have mentioned it was a beautiful day and I did have a cup of tea.
Before anyone who is reading this thinking about becoming a conservation volunteer is put off for life I should explain, sometimes I the volunteer work I do at the park is pure ‘conservation’ work – the tree planting for example, sometimes it’s a mix of conservation work and just mucking in, and sometimes it’s just mucking in, this is just one of those mucking in weekends – not conservation work at all. Ranger Helen also made it very clear what we’d be doing and gave me every opportunity not to be there, and in the end I never went near a bin – I was official photographer and right hand side litter picker.
Ranger Helen is unbelievably consistently cheerful, and whilst I’ll admit the she did pose for the photo’s below she wasn’t faking the smile – or if she was she is the Meg Ryan of faked smiles! Any issues with quality of images are to do with the fact is was very cold by the time those pictures were taken and I was starting to get a little shaky.
These are just two of the bins we emptied on our tour of the park, you can see that grin – unbelievable!
It took about an hour and a half to go round the whole site emptying the dog bins, but we didn’t just do that.
Obviously there is a general inspection, making sure that nothing untoward has happened. Then there is Litter patrol.
I was all ready when I started to write to rant about peoples inability to treat their litter and dog mess appropriately (litter goes home with you, dog mess goes in the bin in case your confused) but I’ve decided not to. Suffice to say that those of you who can’t quite grasp the simple concept outlined above shouldn’t really be in charge of a brain.
Ranger Helen has an incredible eye for litter, a rare talent, and I’m sure the CIA or GCHQ, should they become aware of it could find other uses for it, but as an example she was driving across one of the meadows in the mule when we suddenly stopped and I was told “Sweet Wrapper on the right”, I looked down, nothing, I looked again, slightly forward, slightly more right and a little harder, and I could just see the brown of an individual quality street chocolate (or other similar sweet) poking up above the grass. It was so small I could hardly pick it up, let alone pick it out in a field from a fast(ish) moving vehicle whilst I was driving!
But I did have a bit of a little litter moment myself, as we drove down the path to Little Irchester (often a good source of litter) I managed to spear a foam burger box like Sir Lancelot from his steed in a great joust, ok I wasn’t exactly driving, and the foam box wasn’t exactly fighting back, and if you’re really pushing it the litter pickers weren’t exactly jousting lances, but it was a victory for me and I was a happy man!
Following the battle of Little Irchester, we also popped into the Railway Museum who have just installed a new wood burning and coal stove to heat their office. It’s and interesting place the railway museum, always worth a visit, and now they have heating…
Filling in the Gaps
It was another weekend down the park this weekend, and the tree planting continued, but this time under the guise of the Community Tree Nursery (CTN).
This is another facet of our (and I say “our” as both my lady wife, Sandie, and I are firmly involved in the park now) involvement. The CTN is an organisation within the Park that supplies native trees to the park, to other country parks, to other council organisations, and to other individuals/organisations basically to anyone – but in that order of priority.
And unusually, we decided both to volunteer. Normally, I’m doing my bit for domestic harmony by getting out of the house and Sandie in peace to get on with the domestics. This is the first time we have both rolled our sleeves up and volunteered together, although not the first time we have worked in the park together, there was Halloween (which I never got time to blog about) before where we built a spaceship!
But I digress, it was a beautiful morning on the Saturday (11th December), the Sun was shining and although quite cold, not unpleasantly so. We drove up to the park to be met by the Ranger and Millie; if you remember Millie is the Dog the Ranger is looking after for her partner while he recovers from a broken ankle caused by a flying idiot in a pub. Millie seemed very happy to see us, The Ranger was also enthusiastic, and interestingly had dyed her hair to match Millies coat? I know that people come to look like their dogs but I feel that this is might be reaching for that goal a little too seriously? and anyway she hadn’t quite managed the dipped in a puddle muddy mess look that Millie pulls off so well.
The usual greetings ensued and we made our way into the wildlife centre to make some tea, I call it the wildlife centre as it became immediately clear that there had not been any attempt at washing up for some time and lord alone knows what was living in the sink, it certainly wasn’t possible to get the kettle under the tap. As a man I did what all men do in this situation and stood looking at the sink with the kettle in one hand, and the tap in the other waiting for the washing up to go away, and miraculously it did! At this point in all conscience I should remind you that Sandie was with me so it should not take too many guesses to imagine who actually did the washing up?
Washing up done and kettle boiled it was time to discuss the plan for the day – and in a moment of decisiveness, we decided to spend the morning helping to repair the new hedges around the park (we needed to go through some admin stuff for the CTN and the Friends group in the afternoon).We took our tea and wandered down – as I’ve said before it was a lovely morning and the tree nursery is one of the places you really want to be when the sun is shining (although obviously you might like it a little bit warmer); Waiting in the tree nursery was one of the CTN team leaders, and he had bought his dog along too, a sweet Lab called Jello, who was happily watching his/her (I never asked) master working around the nursery whilst every so often telling Millie off for being such a rapscallion – it should be pointed out that Millie at this point was having great fun in the Tree nursery, treating it as a new type of assault course, jumping from bed to bed and laying down in as much mud as possible – that hairstyle doesn’t come without some serious work you know!
The first site of the day was the A45 lay-by, and to get there requires travelling a great distance across the park. There are three paths in the park – The Yellow path, the Red Path, and the Black Path. The Yellow Path is quite short, a fairly easy walk, not to taxing, no really steep inclines or declines, the Red path is more challenging, longer certainly with steeper gradients and uneven pathways, the serious dog walkers don’t break a sweat but your common or garden park visitor is visibly red and somewhat breathless after completing a round of this walk – especially if keeping up with children (I wonder if that’s where it gets it’s name?) , the Black path is a different ball game altogether, now the park is definitely no Eiger but the Black path for the inexperienced walker or unfit definitely rates as difficult, although I would say that none of the paths in the park are impossible and many of them are accomplished daily by people of all abilities..
The other two volunteers who were around in the morning were both older than Sandie and I and at least one of them had had heart surgery not so long ago, so in the spirit of fairness and equality, we jumped in the Mule with the Ranger and got a lift to the site whilst they walked up. I have to say at the time this didn’t seem incongruous at all and they were offered a ride, but as I write it down the great guilt monster comes to visit with a vengeance.
But we did what we did, and we drove up to the lay-by, it was Sandies first ride in the mule, and I think it was a hit, The Ranger was very well behaved, driving quite slowly (even for the mule) and even Millie didn’t try to get herself run over as often as she would normally.
When we got to the lay-by the peace of the morning was pretty much shattered. By definition of course the lay-by is next to the busy A45, one of the busiest cross country trunk roads in the Midlands, even on a Saturday, and the lay-by is a place where lorry drivers can stop and take a break, during the week there is a snack van there run by the chap that runs the Quarryman’s Rest Cafe soon to be opened in the park but of a weekend it’s just a place to stop. The litter is horrendous. There is a bin – one Wheelie bin for a lay-by capable of housing at least 5 trucks at a time, and that wheelie bin isn’t anchored down so if it’s windy it tips over and empty’s its contents all over the floor which then blows (the prevailing wind comes from across the A45) into the park. WBC of course do their bit to keep the area free of litter as far as possible, and every so often they send a crew of litter pickers along to the lay-by to by to drink coffee from the van and make sure the bin is upright.
There used to be an open fence at this point, but of course this just meant that the litter would just blow through it into the park and would become our problem (whilst it’s on the other side of the boundary it is still, at least nominally WBC’s problem) so it was decided to remove the fence and replace it with hedges, now that’s not a short term fix, hedges need to be planted, grown, and laid (layed? lain?) and maintained, it was maintenance we were up to today.
Armed with various tools absolutely no clue what we were doing Sandie and I set about fixing our first hedge which was conveniently placed behind a field of burdock. As another slight digression I now know three (yes three) interesting facts, well I think they are anyway, about burdock: Firstly it is the other ingredient in the drink Dandelion and Burdock which has been traditionally drunk in the UK for a very long time; secondly it is the inspiration behind Velcro as it will stick to almost anything, and is a complete nightmare to get off, and thirdly is quite sharp if it makes it through your clothes as the tops of Sandies legs attested to that night, she was covered in a thousand scratches! Anyway we headed through the killing, sorry, Burdock field to the line of hawthorn, hazel and others that went to make up the hedge.
I have to say at this point it didn’t look very hedge like, in fact if I was being uncharitable I would have said it was a line of rather too close together trees and not a hedge at all, but then you have to remember that I’m not from round here, I come from London where hedges tend to be privet and old or delivered from the garden centre pre-grown (or in some really memorable occasions – plastic), and once the Ranger explained that each one of the young trees I could see had been planted for hedge laying it became very clear that this would be a substantial hedge when it grew up.
We had the job of walking the line and looking for the dead or the sturdy specimens, slightly contradictory it’s true but both jobs as essential. Each of the dead trees would have to be replaced, the idea of course being that the dead trees were not really going to do so well in a couple of years when we tried to lay them into the hedge, dead things, even in woodlands, tend not to grow so well. the sturdy specimens were a different proposition. as I said earlier, we were armed with many things, not least of which were canes and twirly bits of plastic. the use of the cases is fairly obvious; the twirly bits of plastic maybe less so, and now I am going to try to explain – without the aid of a safety net so please bear with me and raise your hands if you have any questions Ok when you plant Sapling – you normally provide it with something sturdy to rest against in a high wind, saplings are by nature, bendy, if they weren’t they would break very easily and we wouldn’t have very many trees at all, bendy saplings are why trees on the west coast of Ireland and the north coast of Devon look italicised normally sloping away from the prevailing wind. However we don’t want our hedges leaning over, and we do want our trees putting all there energies into growing straight up so we try to give them a little support, and this comes in the way of a stake (normally a bamboo cane – which is a little ironic if you think about it – we are using what is technically a grass to provide support for a tree!) and a tube made of a twirly piece of plastic, you’ve seen them round trees on the side of the motorway. That allows the cane to be placed near the trunk of the tree and the plastic then wraps itself around them both so it both protects them from the elements (a little) and gives the tree something solid to stand up against. What that does mean though is that as the tree grows it fills the twirly plastic sleeve (which gets brittle with UV light) and this locks the stake in with it. So looking for the sturdy specimens means taking out the canes when the plastics sleeves are still quite loose and removing the sleeves as well when they are also tight or brittle, the saplings have to be sturdy by then of course as they will need to be able to stand on there own.
Whilst we were walking the line of trees, Sandie, being a little more observant than me (in the same way that a great dane is a little bigger than a jack russell) spotted some wildlife in need of rescue; obviously at this time of year all sorts of animals hibernate, Bears, Badgers, Lemurs, Snakes, Newts, Bats, Hedgehogs, Ground Squirrels, and Sandie had found one in hibernation crises; I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of an “animal rescue” wannabe so I made sure I had all of the special equipment I needed and prepared to rescue this poor hibernating creature that had just taken a wrong turn. Making sure everyone was a safe distance away (especially Millie) I cautiously approached the creature and gently lifted it, and it’s resting place trying desperately not to disturb it. Moving slowly I gently turned around hoping to reach the new resting place quickly but safely; I looked down to check on my charge, and was gutted, at some point during the momentous journey the friend that I had nurtured and cared for had fallen to ground, lost in perpetuity. But there you are, it’s been a good year for Ladybirds and we saw lots more in much more appropriate hibernation sites. This one had climbed up a burdock stem that had broken off halfway and obviously not had the energy to find anywhere else, I was trying to move it to a tree branch but it fell into the undergrowth – which essentially meant lost for good.
And that wasn’t the only new thing we learnt up at the A45 lay-by. Hazel has Ginger bark! certainly when it’s young anyway, it’s really distinctive. The hedge was generally made of Hawthorn, with some other natives thrown in Hazel was one of them, round leaves (those that had any on) and ginger bark that, and men this might need an explanation from the ladies, needs ‘exfoliation’ (I’ve checked, this isn’t what Agent orange did to trees in Vietnam). It was a pretty Girly walk along that tree line anyway, as we headed down the line there was Me (I’m a bloke) Sandie (my Wife, a woman – obviously), the Ranger also a woman, and Millie – ad dog but a girlie one! and the Ranger started to tell us about the pink Spindle tree, this is a tree I have come across in wood turning magazines, but never seen it alive in the flesh so to speak. It’s called a spindle tree because that’s what it’s used to make – it’s very good for making spindles, and it’s pink because – well I thought it was pink because when you look at the seasoned wood it has a pink tint like some pines, but no, it’s pink because it is more girly than a Cherry tree in full blossom, than Titanic, Something About Mary and My Best Friends Wedding wrapped up a big pink ribbon, covered in rose petals, ok that may be a little unfair, but not only is this tree pink but it holds another surprise, at first the berries are green, then they are a bright bright bright pink, really girly, then each berry opens up to provide 4 bright orange seed pods. In terms of evolution, it’s fairly impressive – at a time when the rest of nature is fairly muted, even Holly berries are relatively muted when seen in context with their parent plant – these pink and and orange marvels are fairly shouting to the every member of the animal kingdom that’s still awake – if you see me come eat me!
And to be honest I really didn’t know about hibernating ladybirds – I assumed that they laid eggs at the end of the summer, all died off and then we had a new batch the next year, it’s really interesting to think that the little aphid browser you see in your greenhouse next year might well be the same one you saw last year (I could be totally wrong of course, they could hibernate purely to mate, lay eggs and die in the spring but I’m an old romantic at heart and that would seem like such a waste, wouldn’t it?)
After the pink spindle tree we went to the stand of Ash opposite to help out the other volunteers there, simply doing the same thing.
When I say stand of Ash I am pleased to be able to say that with a level of authority. obviously I wanted to test Sandies knowledge so I told her it was a stand of Poplar – obviously I knew it wasn’t, I’d grown up with an Ash tree at the bottom of my garden so that was the one tree I could recognise with very little effort. Anyway the Ranger came over and before I could explain my little game she “corrected” me. So again, purely as another test, I told Sandie that the trees behind the Ash trees were Scots Pine, and again the Ranger misunderstood, thinking that I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, and explained to Sandie that in fact they were Larch, a native tree which is unique in that it is both deciduous (loses it’s leaves in Winter) and Coniferous (has cones). I’ll admit I didn’t know that.
While we were standing there the Ranger asked if we recognised a small (when compared to the surrounding Ash), rather grey looking tree which had very rough bark, really in need of a good sanding (or so the wood worker in me was shouting). neither of us could. It was Elm she explained, the only Elm I see now is on the Lathe, and it’s never much bigger than specimen we could see in front of us – and that’s one of the problems, once Elm reaches a certain size it seems to get spotted by the bug that causes the disease, and then that’s the end for that tree. Fingers crossed for this one though – maybe as there are no other elms nearby and it seems to have survived pretty unscathed so far it’ll be ok?
We repaired a few more holes in the morning – but not as many as we feared which was great; and we had a beautiful walk back to the office at the end of the morning, The photos follow this.
All the best dressed Trees!
It was national tree week this week (5th December), you may have noticed, there were events going on up and down the country, with Tree O’clock being by far the biggest – as an attempt to break the world record by no more than 100 people people at a single site in a single hour three teams in three sites broke the existing record by at least 1500 with the winning site in Northern Ireland managing to plant 26,422 Native trees!
And we did our bit in the park as well, well I say we, of course I mean they, I was unavoidably staying in 4 star luxury accommodation on the company dollar eating in fine restaurants and supping the finest diet coke performing important nay vital work for the economy, and helping to reduce British Airway’s end of year loss.
In preparation for my return the Rangers and the Youth Rangers coppiced a patch of Alder that had self set and had grown too crowded; They also began to plant some of the Hazel’s that would be grown instead of the Alder, Why Hazel you ask? Well Breaking Glass was a seminal hit and the real beginning of the brit pop revolution, oh you mean why Hazel trees? they are going to be used for fencing, for which Hazel is especially good (apparently)
There was also an attempt at fire.
Obviously any effort which involves the chopping down of the tree has to, by law, involve the almost immediate use by man (and I’m being specific – I don’t believe women have the same drive to set light to everything) of fire to reduce the large sticks of wood to slightly blackened, but still generally the same size just dirtier and smellier sticks of wood; and lo this did occur! although it has to be said slightly more successfully on Saturday than on Sunday – Apparently God doesn’t like fire on the Sabbath.
And so like the prodigal son before me I returned to the fold, weary from travels I approached the Park on foot (ok I got a lift) through a great storm (and I waited till it had stopped raining) un-prepared for what lay before me (well not entirely un-prepared, Waterproof Hat, Coat, Trousers, Nice warm Fleece, Steel Toe cap boots, Packed lunch including fruit and chocolate bar, money for extra sustenance should it be required, so probably quite well prepared really given that it was only a day at the park) and I was met by the Head Ranger with the ritual greeting “Hello Dave – Put the kettle on and have a cup of tea!”. I can honestly say civilisation will never be dead whilst this place exists.
Seriously though it’s been over a month since I was at the park for anything more than a brief visit to go through paperwork – Halloween was the last night and it was great to get back! and on Sunday I had an absolute plethora of activity to choose from!
As well as tree planting it was also tree dressing weekend. Tree dressing isn’t about getting your favourite tree and putting it in a nice twinset and pearls (although if that’s what you want to do who are we to stop you); it’s about making decorations and hanging them from trees – most households in the UK will indulge in a bit of indoor tree dressing at this time of year, and tree dressing at the park allowed you to make some deccies – hang them on a tree at the park for a time and then take them home and hang them on your tree there.
The weekend had been beset by a couple of issues – not least of which was the weather, it rained a little on Sunday morning, which caused a couple of people who were going to provide entertainment during the day to cancel. The most surprising of these were the Vikings. You may remember from a previous post about woodfest me talking about out Viking rein-actors. I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to history but I’m fairly sure I remember stories of Scandinavian warriors braving the high seas to do great damage on our shores (and as far afield as Iceland and Greenland and even the USA), so imagine the shock when we heard that the 21st century facsimile of this great sea-faring nation should cancel because (and I believe this is correct) “our tent will go mouldy if it gets wet”. So much mediaeval heartache could have been avoided if that was also true in the 6th century!
The Friends group were to have a tombola, and, as such they would need some sort of shelter, one of the friends had kindly loaned a gazebo, but unlike in the summer when we could place it nicely on the meadow it needed to go on hard standing, making it difficult to pin down, and it was breezy, well fairer to say gusty, actually fair to say windy! tying one side down wasn’t going to be an issue, the were railings in exactly the right position, this did mean that one side potentially could flip into the air at any moment. I contemplated leaving it like this – I thought it added to the excitement of the day – if the breeze came along at the right moment it could cause the first unpowered human flight at Irchester Country Park and thus bring the day into record books in it’s own right. but I also thought that there may be a slight risk of a law suit in this litigious age and we found a water and an oil drum to tie the other side of the Gazebo down to. Still I think the potential for human flight is something we could explore later.
Once I got the Gazebo up the kettle beckoned once more, it’s rough tough work getting those gazebos up you know! and I contemplated the rest of the day; there were choices to be made, do I help out on the tombola or do I help plant trees…
Well whilst I sat and contemplated several members of the friends group arrived, ready to do battle with the crowds and manage the tombola – and the decision was made, tree planting it was.
Obviously the first thing that needed to be done in preparation was have a cup of tea, and prepare an insulated cup to take with me, this important step completed we loaded the Mule – this isn’t an animal but a machine; a kind of 4 wheel drive buggy; a utility vehicle with wheels about a 18inches tall and 8 inches wide and a top speed of about 15 mph, but lots of what us petrol heads call low down grunt so it’s very good at pulling weights about and moving around off road; the worst thing in as far as I am concerned is that I can’t drive it – I am destined to be a passenger – but it’s great fun even so.
We made sure we had the important equipment loaded in the mule first, keeping it upright, and in a stable position to ensure that there are no leakages (yes I’m talking about the flask of tea, what did you think I’d be talking about) and then we threw in a couple of spades, sundry other tools, gloves, and a bag of 56 trees.
I was telling someone about this the other day and they were quite incredulous when I said we had a bag of 56 trees, so, for those of you who are sitting there with that same look on your face I’ll explain:
Trees start quite small, even Oak trees, and the Hazels that we were planting were just a couple of years old at the most, the tallest was a metre high, the smallest, about 20cm, all of which were more capable of fitting inside a standard black plastic rubbish sack.
Once the mule was loaded and we were ready to go we stood around the mule for the perfunctory 5 five minutes waiting for the Ranger to complete certain other tasks which included finding Millie: Millie is a dog, I’d say a collie, Manchester terrier cross, very cute, very athletic, and wonderfully independent. This independence does lead however to her sometimes deciding that she needs a little walk – and if the humans around her aren’t willing to come with her then that’s just fine – she’s more than capable of going herself! The good news is she comes when she’s called, the bad news is she may have quite a long way to come so you have to learn a bit of patience!
Whilst waiting for Millie disaster struck! and it was clear this could have set us back some time; I needed to take my coat off as it was was getting warm in the sun, so I put my insulated mug of tea down on the seat of the Mule, and to cut a short story shorter it fell over! spilling almost a tablespoon of my tea onto the seat. What was I to do – the seat would need to be cleaned, possibly dry cleaned, an incident report would need to be completed, and more importantly than anything more tea would need to be brewed! In the end realising that I (and the others) was wearing waterproof trousers I wiped off the seat with the arm of my coat and just held on to my mug a little tighter.
And so we were off for the mornings planting, with a brief stop to collect some canes, we travelled through the park with Millie running along side the mule (even more evidence that she is at least part collie in the manner in which we were being herded) and we reached the spot in question which was near the top of the park by big foot pond. As I said at the top of this quite a bit of preparation had already taken place.
I’ve mentioned before that the park is an old Ironstone Quarry, one of the artefacts of this the creation of “hills and dales”, what this isn’t is hills and dales on the scale of Yorkshire, what this actually means is an undulating surface where a trench was dug and the spoil from the trench was piled behind it, the spoil heaps are about 5 metres apart and the trenches are 2 metres deep (about),
We were planting the trees on the spoil heaps, 6 rows of up to 10 each added up to 56 in total, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet – it was a bit wet.
Now I’ve experienced proper wet already this winter, I was in the Lake District when more rain fell in one place in the UK in one day than has ever done before and it wasn’t quite that wet, but the park is mainly clay, and when that gets wet it gets slippery, and claggy, and sticky, and lots of other things ending in y and in places enough rain had fallen to mean that when you put a spade in the ground, firstly it was quite hard to pull out again, and when you did you couldn’t help but notice the hole left behind filled with water, not a good start for a tree (unless it’s a willow or a mango possibly?)
So there was a certain amount of care needed when choosing the planting site for each tree (as well as about 3 metres from any other new planting) and the hill (sounds much nicer than spoil heap doesn’t it?) we were planting on had had, as well as the Alder, many many other trees growing on it in the past, all of which had left their root systems behind, finally, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, the quarrymen who worked the quarry were a hard working bunch, salt of the earth, you’d never want to meet a more regular bunch of blokes in your life – they just weren’t the most efficient way of quarrying the land for Ironstone, and the proof of this is the amount of Ironstone we find left in the soil whenever we try to dig it today. when we were digging the hole for the bench in the summer we would have taken so much longer if it wasn’t for the half tonne of stone we found in the hole.
This time however I only wanted to make small holes for little trees, and hitting old roots, stones, or finding a patch so waterlogged that it immediately filled with water when I removed the spade was just annoying. But the upside was, unlike the trench in the ground was soft (chocolate mousse soft) and making holes big enough for the trees was pretty simple, straightforward, untaxing, work – and giving that by rights I should have had awful jetlag after a four day trip to the US-A incredibly invigorating!
By lunchtime (2 hours later) we’d planted about 14 trees and drunk 2 cups of tea. all in all I think that was a good morning’s work – we then rounded Millie up (more the other way around) and headed back to the office for Lunch.
When we got back to the office tree dressing had moved on a-pace, the trees outside the new Quarryman’s Rest Cafe (soon to be opened – watch this space) were looking much prettier in their bling; and the Kiddies seemed very happy to be making the decorations and hanging them, even the older ones (those in their 30’s and 40’s) seemed to enjoy it!
After sustenance of sandwiches and over heated soup (don’t ask) we decided that we ought to get back to the planting in case members of the public should arrive looking for us. Unlikely we thought after a day and a half, but you never knew.
Everyone re-mounted the Mule, then we got off and looked for Millie, then we gave up and re-mounted the Mule, then we started to drive to the top of the park, then Millie appeared in front of the Mule.
I should point out that it’s not normal for a Ranger to have a dog (or pet of any kind) with them at the Park, but this was exceptional circumstances, as Millie is actually owned by the partner of the Ranger who was currently incapacitated with a serious injury to the ankle caused by a flying idiot. When Millie ran in front of the Mule on this (and a few other occasions) it has to be said that we thought we might be sharing a little more agony than an ankle problem with Millie’s owner, we were rehearsing the conversation on the way to the top of the park – “I know you thought you’d had a bad week…” or “Millie has always been a really active dog hadn’t she…”, but Millie is a better Dog than that and the Ranger is a better driver and between them no animal or volunteer was injured on the journey (and I have to say, as far as I could tell – no tea was spilt either!)
Back to Big Foot Pond and it was time to get on with the planting, planting a tree is a fairly simple process it seems (there is a great deal to be done to get to this stage but in Blue Peter tradition that’s all stuff we completed earlier!);
First job is to dig a hole – more make a slot – wide enough to fit all of the roots of the new tree deep enough to cover the roots but not so far as go further than it in the earth before.
Then take the sapling and place it carefully in the hole – try to remember to smile for the Ranger taking the picture even when the sun is directly in your face!
Once the sapling is firmly in place then it’s time to protect the tree from the elements – and make it work out a little. first of all it’s given a green jacket which is held in place by two canes, the green jacket made up of two densities of mesh, a solid mesh at the bottom and a more open weave at the top.
The idea of this design is that the tree will reach for the light at the top of the mesh and will be protected from pests at the bottom. The final thing was to make sure that we didn’t run out of tea spoons in 2010
So we planted a teaspoon tree
I’ll try and keep you up to date on the progress on the tea spoon tree – oh and the Hazels 
Woodfest – A Festival OF Wood or a Festival IN the wood?
At Irchester Country Park where I volunteer and where I am a ‘friend’ we recently had ‘Woodfest’ over the next few day’s I’ll be blogging (is that a real word yet?) my experiences and give you a flavour of the weekend as a whole.
So is it a festival of wood or a festival in the wood? Well I guess it’s probably fair to say it’s a bit of both. Certainly there is a ‘woody’ theme, with chainsaw carvers (no they don’t carve chainsaws, they carve object d’art using chainsaws), wood turners, walking stick makers, and other ‘crafty types’. But it’s also true to say that it takes place in the Wood (well on the meadow to be precise, it’d be a bit crowded in the wood, what with all the trees and everything!) and that there were “non” woody exhibitors including jewellery makers, sweet makers, medieval (Viking I think – although my lady wife thought they were just people in pyjamas when we arrived on Saturday morning, which was a reasonable mistake to make at the time, and not so easy later on when they were fully kitted up with battle axes, shields and other armaments) rein-actors, as well as the usual caterers and other detritus that appear at such events. Along with one anomaly which amused me – a very nice gentleman of which I shall tell further stories later on who was selling olives, Turkish delight, and other Mediterranean delicacies. This only amused me in that his stall situated between the Cider stall and the Welly Wanging (I’ll get round to it, I promise) and seemed so incongruent to whole event. That being said he seemed to be doing a roaring trade!
I turned up at the park on Saturday ready to do my bit, and looking forward to my first major event, I’m sad enough that project manager part of my brain is always interested to see how other people manage projects and to see what the outcomes of those projects are so I did what all fair minded people should do when arriving at any site like this and went straight round for a cup of tea, and was rewarded with a nice cup to start my day.
I wasn’t sure how much “conservation” work was going to go on this weekend but it was clear that someone would need me to do something. As part of my volunteering I’ve gotten involved in a fledgling organisation called Friends of Irchester Country Park and WoodFest was going to be a key opportunity for fundraising for us
The weather on saturday was glorious, if you live in the south of England your probably not going to recognise the next few sentences, but in general it’s been an absolutely glorious summer! there hasn’t been a weekend I’ve spent over the park where it hasn’t been nice, maybe late on one afternoon it started to drizzle a little bit, but nothing unpleasant. we really haven’t had much rain at all, and the day’s have been pleasantly warm, not baking hot, just right. If I was the kind of person who reminisces I’d say it was the kind of summer I remember as a kid, you know endless day’s, warm nights, lashings of lemonade, and… hang on that was the famous five, not me, but you get the idea. I know that elsewhere in the country it’s been a really wet, miserable summer, and I’m sorry for you, but here in the East Midlands it’s been superb! And the first day of Woodfest was superb! the Sun shone all day.
Let me take you for a short walk down the left hand side of the arena, as far as the Olive man:
Starting from the car park, remember the arena is in the shape of a triangle, and we are starting in the left hand point with the Vikings. These were a group of people who enjoy dressing up in medieval costume and living like their contemporaries at the weekend (although I’m sure I saw a couple of them at the burger van? must remember to ask them if they took groats?), what was especially impressive about the Vikings is how they entertained themselves in the inevitable quiet moments that you encounter at these events. Let me just say that even at the most successful events you get ‘flat spots’ times when people aren’t about, at either end of the the day, and at lunchtime but also for no apparent reason – often because something else is happening on the site that you know nothing about, and after a while you become quite adept at entertaining yourself in these times – NO! take your mind out of the gutter! you just find other stuff to do! Anyway, whilst many of us where using the time to update our Facebook pages, text our partners, wang a welly or two, discuss the weather, obviously these options were either unavailable or too pedestrian for Vikings so they decided to undertake some archery practice. Obviously they were pretty good at archery, it was one of the demo’s they did, and when they did it they followed all of the standard health and safety procedures, by making sure no one was stood behind the target and the rear of the target was well shielded.
Leaving our Viking friends behind (and lets be honest you wouldn’t want them any other way!) the next attraction is the inflatable slide! yep right next to the mad men with the bows and arrows! Now to be honest it didn’t even enter my head that there was any possible issue with this until I started writing this but now I do I have say it does seem a little incongruous, not only from the point of view of one of the arrows piercing the slide (I’m fairly sure it’d survive) but, also given the audience for the slide (one would assume small children) I’m fairly certain that a stray arrow hitting one of them would cause a bit of a kerfuffle? (isn’t that a great word? and it’s in the dictionary – well done Microsoft, who’d of thunk it! fortunately the kiddies were safe and there were no accidents, not least because the whole thing was being vigilantly run by the same lady who was running the catering franchise, which I have to say on Saturday especially was doing a raring trade in chips, which everyone who visited the stall seemed to walk away with. which led to a nice little feedback loop with the next stall
Next on our little tour of the festival is the Cider stall – now I should explain to our American readers that in the UK cider is not just the innocuous juice of the apple or any other ridiculous attempt at a healthy fruit juice, oh no, rather it is the blood of Gog and Magog, those old Celtic gods who founded this sceptred isle, and whose life giving elixir has an alcoholic volume equal only to rocket fuel! (fortunately I have to say I never saw any Vikings visit the cider stall, otherwise I’m not sure how safe the inflatable slide would have been!). But don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t an example of the famous binge drinking culture you’ve read about, the partakers in this particular tipple treated it with the respect such a revered and honoured delicacy deserved, sipping delicately at their plastic cups (ok maybe one or two were quaffing but they were the cider equivalent of druids, you could tell heavy beard, wide girth and the Men looked like they could handle their drink as well) , paying homage to the fruity deities that provided this bounty.
And so we stagger to the next, possibly most out of place stall in the whole place, the “olive” stand. Now I know that we are all foodies these day’s, and the Vikings seemed particularly fascinated with olive stand, I suppose there are only so many things you can do with pickled herring, and any new ingredient might help break the monotony a little, but I have to say I really didn’t expect to see the Mediterranean equivalent of Del boy, and doing so well, in fact I would say apart from the chain saw carving and the Vikings he was probably the busiest stall. As I said earlier he didn’t just sell Olives, there was every flavour of Turkish delight, as well almost every nut you could imagine! He was a really nice guy though, not brilliant at Welly Wanging, he had a go on the Sunday and apart from being interrupted by customers (most inconsiderate) he just didn’t really get to throw the Welly very far – that being said you had to admire the guy’s effort. Cider man had a go as well, and he made the mistake of telling us how good he’d been the last time he’d tried, it’s worth pointing out that the arena was about 40′ foot wide at this point, and I can say that he threw at least 20 foot, unfortunately never in a straight line, as not a single throw landed inside the arena!
What DO rabbits eat?
If you want to come to the park please do. it’s easy to find, maps and that are on the website it’s woodfest this weekend so there’ll be lots to see and do, including people who can really carve (with chainsaws!)
A day in the park – Part II
So where was I (sorry the last post ended so quick by the way – one of the dangers of writing these things on the train is that I end up with a ‘false’ sense of urgency) that’s right we’d just gone to lunch – BBQ time – and thanks to the park for supplying a lovely one!
After a beautifully cooked couple of sausages and burgers, and watching a couple of colleagues invent a new BBQ cuisine (the "open" burger – which I’m not sure was 100% successful) we started to make our way back to the deep pits of despair that the trenches seemed to have become over lunch.
The problem was I think that we had provided our brains with protein, which I’m sure you all know is the fuel they need to to do real thinking, so the kind of thinking that we should have been doing from the beginning was starting to take place – you know if it takes three people 6 years to dig from Irchester to Australia with a spoon and two forks how long will it take them to give up and find the nearest pub!
And in fact the really honest truth was we were knackered, and I don’t mean a little tired from a bit of manual labour, I mean we were completely shattered. I personally didn’t believe I could shovel another single load of earth, let alone the several cubic feet that remained (All in all both trenches were a 100 cubic feet of earth – I’ve just worked that out, almost a month later and the thought has made muscles hurt!)
We protested…
Boy did we protest! Never, not in a million years was this bench ever going in! if we were luck we might possibly maybe at a push with a real effort and a lot of extra help get one of the trenches finished before the end of the but both of them? Not a snowballs! More chance of seeing Mohammed Ali play scrabble with Harry Potter! (and I don’t know it just seems unlikely)
I try very hard to keep names (other than already famous ones) out of this blog which is a shame because although I didn’t know it at the time I quickly became victim to some of the most effective motivational team talk I have ever come across, and I worked in banking in the 90s!
"You can do it", they said
"you haven’t got far to go" they said
"The soils quite soft in this trench" they said,
"It’ll be easy going soon", they said,
"I’ll be over to help very soon", they said
And the fact was, all of that was true, it didn’t of course detract that we were only just close to halfway through in terms of volume of earth shifted, and halfway through in terms of time available. But we got our heads (and our backs) down and started digging again, and it was bloody hard work! Every shovel was painful, every rock felt like a boulder, every time I bent down I thought I was going to stay there, if all this sounds a little dramatic trust me, I’m playing it down, I’ve never worked like it in my life. I know my grandfather probably wouldn’t have blinked at it (actually one of them would he was a library clerk) but even these day’s to dig a hole like that most professionals would have access to some heavy machinery – probably a mini digger of some sort.
Anyway we were made of sterner stuff and we kept on digging, and digging, and digging, and digging, and digging, and then we started to measure, and then dig, and then measure, and then dig some more and then measure again – and surprise surprise we were only a little way (an inch or two) from nirvana – ok maybe not nirvana, but certainly it felt close to me! You’ve got to remember 2 inches of earth at the bottom of the trench is still nearly a cubic foot of earth so it’s not insignificant but in terms of 1% of the total it’s amazing trust me!
Just knowing this was like drinking 30 gallons of Lucozade (Gatorade if you’re American) I turned orange and threw up! – no not really – I mean I was full of energy! I picked up the spade and started to dig in – unfortunately like Lucozade it was just empty calories and lasted just long enough for my knees to buckle – but it felt good while it lasted.
and so we laboured a little more to ensure that we got that last few inches of soil out of both trenches, and it was horrible, but we did it.
And it was time to moist the bench from the side of the worksite into the trenches. It’s worth taking a moment to remember how big these benches are – remember I said in my previous post – I’m 6’4” and when I stood next to it I could rest my chin on the table, and they are sturdy, by which I mean that these are 1×4” timbers, so they weigh a bit. and we are, not to put to fine a point on it, not to beat around the bush knackered at this stage lifting anything seemed like a big ask – half a ton of bench – well needless to say i was searching the horizon for the crane
There wasn’t one, not even a little one, no wheels of any sort that would have made the job in any way easier where available. No levers, and no physicists or engineers were in the immediate vicinity to provide us with the necessary design expertise to manufacture our own crane or other leverage device.
Now you may wonder why I’m not celebrating the fact that at least the holes had been dug, but to be honest by the time we got here I didn’t care, all I could think of was the fact we had to lift the darn bench and drop all the earth back in the hole! but we were made of strong stuff, and our numbers had grown by one so we took a corner each and moved toward the holes.
The first issue of course was where we had put the spoil, which meant that to get the bench positioned over the holes we had to walk over the top of the spoil, not easy, not impossible, but not easy – we got there though and gently we started to lower the bench into the ground…
it didn’t fit
I don’t mean the hole was massively obviously too small – that would be silly, I mean we got the very heavy bench about halfway down and it got stuck because ends of the trench sloped almost imperceptibly a couple inches towards the centre.
There was nothing for it, we had to get the bench out, so knees bent we got our shoulders under the bench and gently lifted – there was of course no option but to gently lift, the thing was just so damn heavy that to do anything else would have been more than impossible.
We repositioned the bench, the drums rolled, the trumpeters trumpeted and we lowered it once more into it’s new home and…
it didn’t fit, again
so we repeated, about three times in the end, but we got there in the end.
And as we lowered the bench finally into it’s resting place it settled down, and looking across the picnic table you could see that it was a flat as a billiard table. We’d done it! obviously we still had to backfill the soil and that was going to be a little hard work but compared to what we’d been doing, nothing, so we went to sit down.
and that’s when we noticed the small problem-ette with the benches (and before the health and safety police arrive lights flashing and sirens blaring – we were going to sit on the ground – not on the bench before it was backfilled). It was apparent that if were to start to backfill now the benches would be fixed into a permanent position for which the technical term I understand is ‘Pissed’. Simply put, the benches were about 30 degrees away from the horizontal plane at either end with a torsion of about 20 degrees. Or as I said, Pissed.
So we had to work out how to straighten it up – and first thing was – yes you guessed it – get the bench out. It took a little while and some application, but we did work it out in the end, simply put we needed to put pressure at different points on the frame (and I can hear you falling asleep already) lets just leave it at we got the bench in the ground and it was all straight.
We started to backfill at about 5pm and at 5:30 declared the bench open, and it really didn’t take long before the first family sat down with their picnic. This is going to sound really twee now but when that family sat there with their sandwiches and tupperware the pain and the sunburn didn’t go away but it was all worth it.
So am I going to go back to the park to volunteer again – well all this was a month ago – and I have, so yes. I have to say it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.
There’ll be more about the park and probably the Friends of Irchester Country Park here and on my Facebook page.
Irchester Country Park
Mine name is Dave and I’m a volunteer
There I said it!
It’s out in the open
Which is more appropriate than you’d think, but more of that in a minute.
Seriously though I did a lot of volunteer work when i was younger, mostly through St Johns, but as I got older that seemed to wane (by which of course I mean disappear into a black hole somewhere between work and the pub!).
Recently I have had some opportunities to ‘re-valuate’ my life, milestone birthdays, health scares and the such and I realised that I kinda missed giving back, twee I know but true all the same.
Also, and this’ll come as a surprise to those of you who have seen a photo of me (there is one earlier in the blog) I noticed that I’m not all that fit. I always knew the marathon was a bit beyond me, but because a recent illness has meant not driving, i got a bike, and rode it to the doctor – and what a good choice of first venue that was! I was only dropping off a repeat prescription, I could hardly walk when I got off the bike (and it wasn’t just because the saddle was too hard!)
So I decided it was time to kill two birds with a single stone, put something back and get a bit fit and i went to Irchester Country Park to volunteer. On the second Saturday of every month they have “conservation volunteers day” and a colleague of my Wife suggested it was a worthwhile cause. He wasn’t wrong.
I arrived about 9:30, and sat in the car park for a while just ‘scoping’ the joint, there was a chap on one of those motorised scooters, who pulled up behind a car, got off the scooter, opened the boot (trunk if your an American and the translation software’s broken again) and started to disassemble the scooter.
I was obviously out of practice at this volunteering lark – I watched him for a good 5 minutes before I realised he was parked in a disabled bay and might benefit from a little help! DOH! not the first (and certainly won’t be the last) Homer moment, but fortunately he was very gracious and didn’t lamp me with the battery, just patiently explained where the bits went in his car and let me get on with it.
5 minutes later my wife’s colleague turned up, so I waved bye bye to her (and scooter man, who by this time may have been more than a little grateful to get rid of me) and latched on to my new friend and victim.
Just realised it’s taken me nearly 500 words and I haven’t even started yet! hope you’ve got coffee! I pride myself on my directness you know!
Anyway, I was quickly introduced to Helen – the Ranger who explained the main Job of the day, so we put the kettle on, sat back and listened to birds and insects…
sorry, don’t know quite what happened there – the blog seemed to be taken over by some sort of daydream demon!
we did put the kettle on, that was true, and we did sit and have a cup of tea for a little while but that was fuel for the work ahead and to be frank had I known what I was heading for it’ll have been a gallon, not a mug! 
The main job of the day (after we had brushed the sand back into the sand pit) was to “plant” a picnic bench. I say plant as that’s probably the best description of what we were going to do.
Before I start all the measurements below are in feet and inches so for those of you who think in metres and centimetres I suggest you refer to the early ‘70’s for conversions
The Picnic benches them selves are made up of three pieces, 2 seats and a table (make sense?) each having at least 1 leg at either end, or in the case of the table 1 leg in each corner (still with me?) the bottoms of the legs are then joined by a single plank at either end making the benches a single unit. If you understood all of that without a diagram well done! if you need a diagram – then I’m in trouble.
All of that meant that we needed two trenches, parallel to each other, 5 feet apart at the centre, at least 5 feet long – a very important measurement we found later – with straight sides and a flat bottom – all of this of course is written with hindsight and seems obvious now but please bear with me. Oh and most important they needed to be 4 feet deep!
You did read that right I did say 4 feet! for the metrically challenged out there just this once I’ll do the sums for you – there are 12 inches to a foot, so there are 48 inches in 4 feet, 1 inch is 2.54 centimetres, so 4 feet is 48 x 2.54 = 121.92cm or after a little bit of rounding up 1.22 metres! for those of you with the inability to envisage what 4 feet or 1.2 metres is – your sofa is probably about 1.2 metre’s tall.
And we were planning to dig that deep to get this Picnic bench in the ground, apart from the obvious concerns regarding the contravention of mining regulations while digging that deep in a children’s playground, there was also the simple concern that we only had a day to dig the hole!
So our immediate reaction, incredulous disbelief ‘your joking!’, followed by begging – ‘please tell me your joking?’, followed by arguing ‘you are joking aren’t you!’ followed by flat denial ‘it can’t be right’, eventually subsided to a gentle simmering acceptance as we had to start, and being the consummate professionals we were (ok one professional, but two very enthusiastic amateurs (ok one enthusiastic amateur, but one enthusiastic but mildly apprehensive amateur is better than nothing!) we broke ground, and when I say broke, I really do mean broke.
Before we started we wandered around the playground looking for a good site for the bench and I noticed what I thought was a great spot but the playground gate near the climbing frame and a slide, and the others seemed to agree. It had everything – it was flat, there was lots of foot traffic already so it was it popular, a perfect site in fact for our bench…
Did you see the two clues as too why this wasn’t a great site to dig by hand? No? they were next to each other…
The first was it was flat, apparently, not only had the area been rolled to compact it so it was flatter, but the bit where we were about to did was where they had stored the rollers overnight! just to pack it down a little harder!
The second was the foot traffic, lots of it, it seems half the world has walked across this little patch of land and most of them have jumped up and down for good measure as well – how kind!
finally, and this is of course the kicker, this whole place was an ironstone quarry in a former life, and to be frank, they weren’t very good! they left loads behind! any one would think that digging this soil was hard work!
but we broke ground, and progress begun, slow but palpable progress, on one trench at first, the three of us working like a reasonably well oiled machine, alright, one that had been left in the shed for a little while, bought out, doused in WD40, sharpened, and cleaned, but working well and making progress
After an hour or so we even felt confident enough to start trench 2 (and yes it did start to feel like an episode of time team!).
I’m assuming you’ve never dug ironstone, not withstanding my comment about how well the quarrymen did all those years ago it has to be said it must have been a bloody hard job, remembering of course I was just trying to lift the dirt our of the ground, i didn’t care about what type of dirt it was or what happened to it once I’d finished with it. Every shovel load I got was heavy and thick, and remember it was a dry day and had been for some time, this wasn’t ‘claggy’ soil it was relatively ‘good’ soil to dig.
But the other point I have to make about this is the behaviour of the stone when you hit it with the spade, if you ‘wacked’ it head on it’d pretty much react as you’d expect and hurt, vibrations bouncing up and down the spade, but if you caught it just right it might also shatter like glass, not too surprising you’d think until you try to pick it up and it’s almost like a liquid.
All the time we are digging, digging, digging at the back of our mind was gnawing away the thought that we had so much more to dig… 4 feet was such a huge depth!
Two more and we could legally bury someone (I could think of a candidate or two). but we are dedicated (read slightly mad) so we carried on digging digging digging…
Then the behemoth, sorry I mean the Bench (and it does deserve it’s own capital letter) arrived. Now I’m 6’ 4” which I’d say was pretty tall, and I could just about rest my chin on the Bench when it was out of the ground, all of a sudden that figure of 4 feet seemed a little more possible, my heart sank (lower than the trench if it’s possible).
Then I saw it, the yellow mark, a little way up the leg of the table – Nirvana – I’ve never been very good at estimating distances by eye but these marks looked to me like they were much less than 4 feet – no more than 2 feet at the most – and the first trench was already well on the way to that (about 14 inches).
So we got the tape measure, put the end of the tape to the floor, and lifted the body up, and watched the inches pass by, first 18, then 24, then, 26, 28, 30 and with a sign of relief that could be heard all the way across the park stopping at 32” 2 feet 8 inches deep, yes we had some way to g o, but it was reachable, we were going to do it!
So we dug some more – well a lot more – and then some more, and we had some more help, and we dug some more and then someone mentioned food! and it was time for the BBQ!
I forgot to add – this is the link to the park! http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/en/councilservices/Leisure/countryside/Pages/Irchester.aspx please feel free to visit!
Turning Hats!
Last night at the woodturning club I go to we had a demondtation from a chap called Andrew Hall, who makes hats – yes hats – out of wood!
It was truly inspirational: the abilities of the guy, combined with a great sense of humour, and I think, modesty was really something.
There were also some visitors to the club (Wellingborough Wood Turning Club) who were visiting from the Tudor Rose club which is just the other side of Northampton. We all seemed truly impressed by Andrews work.
Twittering on
Just a quickie, I’m on twitter http://twitter.com/davegwarren, as inspired by my Hero (and I know he’d probably hate that) Stephen Fry.
Not much else to say today (see if I put anything on Twitter later
