The weather has been terrible for a while now but Sunday was looking fine so I headed off for another session at my woods. As I approached the weather became wet and was raining quite hard as I struggled to get the padlock to the main gate undone. Eventually it succumbed to my efforts and I headed up the main ride only to be confronted with my next mini challenge – a small oak tree had blown down and formed a perfect barrier across the road. Still attached at the roots it was not possible to simply drag it. Still raining I debated – should I wait in the car until it eased (boring) or bite the bullet, clear the tree and get wet but at least I could carry on to my neck of the woods. Luckily I had brought the chainsaw and took the wet option. The bonus was a few oak logs for my woodpile, a fair payment for doing everyone else a favour.

Having had some severe windy weather, I was expecting to see some tree victims in my woods, so my first job was a walk around. The previous visit revealed a newly snapped of silver birch and this visit I found another one. This one was already dead and had been uprooted. Birch seem to be specifically vulnerable in my wood. There are numerous decaying specimens, standing and fallen. It’s tempting to get busy with the chainsaw to clear up and build the firewood pile but dead wood is incredibly important for a woodland for small creatures, fungi etc so I’m leaving most of it. It also creates features giving a more natural and wild look which I like. The last thing I want is for my wood to look manicured.

Time for a brew so I got busy and started my small fire off just in time for the rain to come down again. Mild panic ensued as I had brought some pea and mint soup to heat up for lunch too. I’ve been wondering about this situation for a while – what do you do to protect your fire when it rains, or do you just accept it as one of those things. I grabbed an old wooden pallet and propped it by the fire sloping over it slightly with the wind at the back, hoping it would keep perhaps 50% of the rain off. I stoked it up as quickly as I could to create more heat and flames in the hope that the rain would ease before it quenched it. It lasted about 15 minutes and I’m glad to say the fire stayed in and I had my hot soup. A new lesson learned too.

This visit was a mix of work and pleasure. I had a few chats with some of the neighbours, sawed, chopped and stacked some more firewood for next year and had a good look around for a possible place to site an old garden bench I am about to inherit. One of my short term aims is to provide various features that enhance the wood for myself and other visitors. To add a little magic and some new places where you can sit for a while with a cup of coffee and just enjoy a different aspect of the wood than the usual two locations I first created. I’ve already cut a few paths through the bramble to allow access into the more overgrown areas and I found one place where I think it would go nicely. I’ve noticed this spot before, how it gets some nice dappled morning sun and is also not visible from any of the main rides, so providing a nice private spot where you can disappear from the rest of the world. The first photo below doesn’t capture the nice feel of it and the sun had hidden too but I took it to remind myself of the location. The second photo was taken a few weeks ago and shows the same spot from a different angle with the sun lighting up a beautiful hazel coppice.