After a cancellation yesterday, because of very strong winds, six Trust
volunteers had a very good day in the sunshine, on the Wenhaston site on
Sunday Feb. 16th.
We managed to complete most of the remaining dead tree work (where still
standing or leaning, these have to be done by the end of the month).
The trackbed path is now almost complete, although a very large number
of stumps remain: dealing with these (which everyone trips over, all the
time) will take much of the early spring.
At the accommodation crossing site, several more trees have half-fallen
in the most recent storms, and hopefully we’’ll have time to make these
safe in the next week or so. We have been puzzled that, although the
posts for the northern boundary gate on this crossing were visible,
there seemed to be no evidence at all for the southern gate. However –
we were tackling what seemed to be yet another dead elm covered with
ivy, poised uneasily over the pathway, and the saws kept grating on
metal. It turned out that the “tree” was actually one of the gate posts,
rotten at the base, and completely swathed in and supported by ivy, the
ivy also having grown another eight or ten feet into the air, supported
only by itself.
Anyway – after a great deal of sawing and clipping, we managed to get it
down – much hampered by some brambles the like of which I have never
seen – some more than an inch thick, and others armoured with some of
the densest and most vicious thorns we could imagine. Somewhat cut about
and excoriated, we retired with honour from the fray at 3, as the
clouds gathered and a cold wind rose.
Gradually, we are gathering a number of SR artefacts – hold-back chains
for the gates, hinges, various fixings, sleepers, fencing posts and
rails – and an iron hoop that one member insisted was the tyre from a
wagon wheel (if only).
