The stalker's Old Copse workday was later this year because of virus restrictions. Twelve stalkers turned up, plus multiple vehicles, a digger, a winch and other assorted kit - an impressive team with impressive machinery to tackle the day's work.
The first task was to make a secure home for the new second hand quad bike. The previous quadbike was stolen during the early days of lockdown when few people were about. Thieves cut the gate open, drove a truck in, used an angle grinder to release the quad, loaded it onto a trailer and made their getaway leaving the gate wide open. The police said that rural crime has increased a lot during the past months. The southern end of Old Copse is particularly vulnerable to unwanted intruders as it's easy to simply hop over the gate, or walk through the 'squeeze gap. The best we can do is to hide things as well as we can so as not to be a target for thieves. Mark was pretty laid back about the loss, only regretting not having got around to putting a tracker on the bike, and forgetting to cover it with camo netting so it couldn't be seen from the road. Anyway, another quad bike was purchased and a safer parking place needed to be found.
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| Building a new home for the quadbike |
Having scoped out a suitable spot earlier the team dug out a space in the bank and lined it with timber. The new quadbike has moved into its new home and is not visible from the road. It's covered in camo netting, has a tracker and is firmly attached to a hefty metal pole. Though, as Mark says philosophically, if someone sees it and really wants it, they'll find a way.
The other task was to build a wood store for all the felled timber scattered about the wood and needing a weatherproof home to season properly. This involved processing it in situ before winching and dragging it up steep slopes to the car park and then filling the new store with it. I only saw it as they were finishing and was surprised at how impressively BIG it is! We hope the firewood it contains doesn't suffer the same fate as the quad bike but if so, we'll try to be as philosophical as Mark.
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| An amazing amount of wood |
We really appreciate having the deerstalkers' help, to manage the fallow of course, which over the years has made a great difference to our restoration of the wood, but also important, to do some of the 'heavy lifting' which the two of us just wouldn't be able to manage by ourselves. As ever, many thanks to Mark, Steve and the team.
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| Taking a well-earned break |
