No I haven’t just forgotten to write my blog, it’s actually six weeks since I last went. The road works continue to mean that I only go weekends and it’s been a mixture of holidays away, bad weather and other commitments. As I drove up the ride, a buzzard flew across my bow, it’s huge dark wingspan took my breath away. Because it’s been so long since my last visit, the woods felt unfamiliar somehow but it was nice to go exploring and rediscover the joy of being there.

Storm Ciaran a few weeks ago had blown over my big dead sycamore. It had been slowly dying since I bought the woods. I thought it would stand as valuable deadwood for some years but as it was pretty rotten, had been debating whether to take it down to make it safe. It had a huge lean on it and combined with the unknown extent of rot, made it a very dangerous tree to fell. So I was delighted to learn from a neighbour that it had fallen. I suspected it would be blocking a path that I have created, down to the lower part of my woods. So armed with chainsaw equipment I anticipated some hard graft clearing up. Actually it had fallen just to the side and only a few broken branches were littering the path. The trunk of it is about 40 centimetres diameter at the base so a lot of work to cut up. Because it is pretty rotten, I decided to leave it there as deadwood to slowly decay. The tree had a big fork in it so I decided to make a bit of a feature for a wildlife cover by stacking the broken branches across it to form a sort of roof/shelter.

At the top of the woods stood a dead horse chestnut tree. The top had broken off awhile ago and as it stood on the corner next to the ride, I wanted to drop it to make safe. I needed it to fall into my woods so it could be left as deadwood. I made my cuts but it obviously wanted to fall in the opposite direction so it was a tricky one to do requiring numerous wedges to force it over but eventually went exactly where I wanted it. Before and after photos.

It was so good to be back there and I am determined to try to go more regularly. I shall leave you with some photos of the amazing fungi around.