After a bit of a Woodchip shortage we have had a sudden rush over the last few weeks. We have been busily repairing our paths that have suffered over the winter months.

A big thanks to Phil, Libby, Dave & Brad (SkillMill), Finn and Rob who have all helped with this work.

Our Woodchip providers, Dave Saunders (Town & Country) and Barry Wilson and his team at NCC.

Only another 500 metres to go!!!

I was met today by Charles and Camilla walking their Christmas dinner off (maybe)😀

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and hope you have a very happy and healthy New Year. Thank you for your support during 2024.

I thought it would be good to use our new pond to trial a duck raft as I would like to put one on the Dunces corner pond. I made a pallet sized raft with the help of my little helper Finn.

So it all seemed to go well and I can now be confident to upscale this for a bigger version on the largest pond. We’ll have to see if the ducks appreciate our work!

Here are a selection if pictures I have taken over the last few months (Sept-Nov) to give a flavour of what has been out and about:-

We have been working on a couple of small projects up near the new pond. One is putting a reed screen up to shield the pond and any wildlife on it from approaching visitors.

The other project was to improve access to the leaky dams by putting in some steps and a couple of little bridges.

A Grey Wagtail was on hand for quality control!

Following on from our exploits with the chipper we (Phil, Myself and Dave a Brad from Skill Mill) have continued our path laying.

I Also to make best use of our dead ash trees we are using them to line our new paths. Just as an aside I have been most impressed by my little electric Polaris, it’s a sturdy little beast, as shown below laden with 14 tree logs.

The tree trunks do make the paths look smart, in my opinion.

I have just completed a little side project that hopefully benefits the many passers by who walk the lane next to the reserve. There was a seat half way up the lane, that looks into the reserve, but was in poor condition. I used some donated logs and wood to replace the seat.

The seat has had the final part of its makeover. Thanks to Fiona for doing the plaque for me.

Having done a lot of coppicing and tree felling we had a lot of wood to dispose of, too much to leave as brush piles. So as we were in need of chippings for the paths I bit the bulletin and hired a wood chipper.

We got in a bit of a beast from Max Hire, this could chomp through logs up to 6 inches in diameter.

Many thanks to Phil, Dave and Brad for helping work our way through the wood piles.

The resulting chippings are being used for our new path to the new pond.

We had the pleasure of hosting a visit byAlnwick scout trip to day. They had a tour of the reserve and then we put them to work.

Northumberland County Council had kindly delivered a decent heap of wood chip and the scouts went to work putting this pile of wood chip on our path in front of Deer View hide. Phil and I had previously prepped the path using a chain link fence covered by weed suppressant

Chain link fence as support.

Meanwhile further into the reserve more path work was being done.

Even further in a bit of mud slinging was going on!

Big thanks to Gillian who organised the visit and to the scouts and helpers that worked pretty hard.