Tuesday
Off to Callendar Woods today for a spot of tree clearing along a different path from our normal spot. Bow saws and loppers in hand we got to work. Despite the never ending downpour everybody powered on through and managed to clear a huge area, opening up the wood so as to make it ‘less scary’ for the locals. All in all everyone did an extremely good job, especially in the wet conditions! So well done everyone.
Wednesday
Back at Callendar wood for possibly the last time….everybody cracked on cutting and thinning out the wood with sunny skies above. We don’t actually know what happened today but I am sure that it was a fantastic day with hard work, hilarity and team building galore.
On Thursday we were up at Bonaly Country Park in the Pentlands, doing some work for the Friends of the Pentlands group. Task for the day was tree planting up in the Dean Burn Gorge, a ‘short’ distance straight up the hill from the car park.
Fortunately the wind was not the gales which were promised, but still substantial. Most of the group headed down into the gorge (away from the wind) to plant and replace missing trees from some existing tree guards; while Kevin and Rob set off further up the main track to clear the drains.
It may well be called the Dean Burn Gorge, but they really should change the name to ‘Gin Valley’, what with the number of juniper and sloe bushes around the place!
The existing trees were doing so well, there were few to replace, so we just carried on planting new trees (blackthorn, oak, birch and some others I think). By the afternoon we were slightly running out of things to do; so we started removing the old tree guards from existing trees. This was done with the aid of an assortment of knives (donated by Rob and Pat). Unfortunately, although the ranger had kindly brought the trees and guards up the hill, we had to get them back down. A lot of to-ing and fro-ing commenced!
At the end of day, everybody piled into the minibus – too tired to go on a nature walk! Thank you all for your hard work this week!
To see photos of past and present projects click here
Also we would like to tell you all that our Christmas night out is the 15 December at Mezz Bar on Broughton Street from 7.30pm, hope to see you there. Please wear some form of Christmas hat, ta.