A Busy Day

Waiting for Wiggo

Where's the breakaway?

A busier Saturday than usual  at Old Copse: First thing, opening the gates for Bob, plus Jeep and trailer,  to load some cordwood, When he collected some last February he got temporarily bogged down in the mud, but with the dry weather and our track repairs he had no trouble this time. He suggested doing regular felling for us in exchange for some  free wood - we're certainly interested in this sort of barter.

Then meeting the  neighbours lined up on the road waiting for the Tour of Britain to whizz by Old Copse .  After a longish wait, the cyclists were  heralded by  motorbikes with headlights blazing, and followed by support cars  - like the Tour de France, only smaller.

Well, we meant to enter this year - we've got all the gear!

Here they come

And they're gone

All the excitement was over in 10 minutes, and it was back to the wood to meet a contractor for the planned new entrance and track into Old Copse. Then coffee with friends camping in the wood over the weekend. They were using a simple small tarp slung between the trees, open at the sides and front. It looked far preferable to being zipped into an enclosed plastic tent but a trifle chilly perhaps at 5am. We soon set them to work thinning the birch on the ride.

Camping under a tarp

The endless task that is ride-side clearance

Making stakes for tree guards

The rhododendron never gives up, still making an appearance after numerous bonfires on it.

Rhododendron

The common purple rhododendron, Rhododendron ponticum (L.) is a roaring success in its own terms. First introduced in 1763 as a decorative plant for estates and gardens, in the following 250 years it has rampaged through the UK's lowland woods, covering large parts of Snowdonia, western Scotland, Devon and Cornwall. It is a vigorous competitor - nothing eats the shiny evergreen leaves, the dense shade prevents anything growing underneath and the big purple flowers throw out millions of seeds every summer. Eventually dense thickets form. DNA analysis has shown that R. ponticum is a native of Portugal and Southern Spain, which makes sense as Conrad Loddiges, the original importer, had the seed sent from Gibraltar. Presumably its growth in hotter countries is checked by lack of rain - which might explain why it does so well here.

In Old Copse there are fewer than a dozen small patches of rhododendron, some small clumps in the birch on the east side of the ride, and two bigger ones in the SSSI down by the water. On the last weekend on September we had a go at rhododendron bashing. The Forestry Commission website is full of suggestions on how to tackle it, and we decided on the low tech method of hacking it down, applying herbicide to the stumps and piling up the old leaves and branches for burning later. We destroyed four of the biggest clumps in the birch wood, and at the same time chopped away at the thinner scrubby birch to widen the resulting cleared patches. The rhododendron has  colonised any sunny patch, so possibly the current dense birch growth has inhibited it from spreading further. As we thin out the woods, we will have to be vigilant to make sure we haul out any upstart seedlings which will otherwise flourish in the newly cleared areas.