Firstly a Happy New Year to you all!
The first week of the new year was spent at Corstorphine Hill (all week) doing a variety of things…….
Tuesday was a clear but wintery day. We set off on an adventure around the perimeter of the zoo and spied some zebras on the way. After arriving at what we thought was the site we could not find the trees we were meant to be rescuing from the hungry rabbits. After a quick phone call and relocation we discovered the very obvious patch of trees that we were to put guards round.
Alan and Neil went to work protecting the exsisting trees and Keith planted some new Rowan and Oak to replace the ones which had been munched beyond repair. The rest of us set about attacking the nasty sycamores which were beginning to take over. In the afternoon we all got an all over body workout by scraping paths and burnt off those minces pies from christmas.
On Wednesday, the group was split between path scraping and trench/drain digging in the morning. The drain’s proportions were uncertain, thus we ended up diggining a short section in what appeared to be the wettest area – overlooked by the zebras in the zoo. So there is now a drain…the only problem may be small children and dogs falling into it. As the drain digging was finished fairly quickly, it was back to path scraping for all. A large rhododendron bush was destroyed in the afternoon.
As this was pretty tiring work, we finished up early and then commenced on a nature walk – specialising in winter tree identification.
Thursday, was essentially more of the same, interspersed with installing some signposts and information boards (which we incorrectly assumed would be the easier part). We had also cleverly left all the tasks, which were furthest away from each other til now.
It began with meeting the ranger and heading to the site of the first board – this was only being partially replaced. So while Pat and Martin cracked on with unbolting the board and trying to fit the new one; the rest firstly did a (small) litter pick and then set about carrying the rest of the boards, water and concrete up to the top of Rest and Be Thankful (the second site). There is clearly a logical reason as to why no-one had put a sign there before (beautiful view aside)…its a really steep hill!! Especially when carrying a heavy sign! Leaving it at the top of the hill, we returned to the first sign – which was just being completed.
Had an early lunch, then went on to install the second sign, leaving myself, Neil and John at the bottom to continue path scraping. The second sign seemed to cause as much trouble as the first (missing bolts, rocky ground etc) however eventually it was in place. Again another earlier finish, followed by a nature walk.
To see photos of past and present projects (and the winning captions from the quiz) click here.