Bryan’s Wood re-visited 11-9-2012

This was another day of two halves.

After a slightly damp start and a walk to the coppiced area at the centre of the woods carrying various fencing tools, we continued the job of strengthening the fence around the coppice in order to keep out the deer.

One team were using bill hooks to add points to the ends of the home made sycamore fence posts cut last week – a job not dissimilar to sharpening 8’pencils (although not nearly so easy!) Another team got on with the knocking in of some of these posts next to the existing rotten ones. Said quickly this doesn’t sound too difficult but using a 13kg fence post knocker is a heavy duty task which calls for a breakfast of spinach. The even more difficult bit was nailing the new posts to the old ones – a skill that Tony and Dave had to develop to a new level as the enormous nails decided to bend every time. They can now offer training programmes to interested parties in the ancient art of ‘two hammer embedded nail straightening’.

After lunch we had to abandon our morning duties in order to carry in the fence posts that warden Paul had brought from a local saw mill in his newly acquired Landrover and trailer*.

Walking along the beautiful footpath through Bryan’s Wood on a sunny day sounds like a pleasant way to spend the time doesn’t it? It would be if you didn’t need to factor in the following:

• 9 people
• 53 fence posts – 5’, 8’ and 10’ long (each one 4-6” in diameter and very heavy, some requiring one person at each end)
• 2 x 10kg rolls of barbed wire (can only be carried by threading the reel on a heavy fencing bar)
• Distance for everything to be carried – 1/3 of a mile

Backwards and forwards. Backwards and forwards. Backwards and ..........

All kinds of maths could be done here – I am simply too exhausted to calculate! Some posts only got carried as far as the half way mark so there’s a job for next time. And then of course we’ll need to resume the job of knocking the posts in. An NCV’s job is never done.

*Special note A - With only one day’s training behind him Paul did a great job of negotiating the very hairy track up to the entrance to the woods (we won’t mention the sticky moment at the end of the day when he had some difficulty turning the vehicle around in a tight space, near a fast flowing stream!)

Special note B - Many thanks to Gretchen for the delicious flapjack that set us up for the work ahead during our coffee and lunch breaks.

Ros (E)