Thursday 16 July 2009

Merrydale and Scouts


Heidi and Lisa standing proudly next to their pile of collected guards, and looking wet.

In his capacity as a Scout Leader Duncan took a group of Scouts up Merrydale and got them to take off stakes and guards from the grown trees. Heidi and Lisa turned out to help. Philip was away bracken bashing at High Wood. By all accounts it was a wet, wet Thursday evening.

Monday 13 July 2009

Merrydale - Lord of the flies


See the flies on Simon's hat, see Geoff, fly-less. Why?

So, this morning we were up Merrydale, a lovely little valley that runs away to the west north west of Slaithwaite. The site has some semi-ancient natural woodland, and this was supplemented with new planting some years ago. We were back there today to remove guards and retrieve stakes for re-use. Problem was, flies! Flies, flies damn flies. You can see them all over my hat in the pic. Other than that it was delightful up there. And the bilberry bushes are weighed down with big juicy fruit too, so lots of jam this year. We gathered 175 stakes for re-use, saving us £70 or £80. We also took a similar number of the old guards off site. Apricot and walnut cake today. Very good.

Duncan, Neil and Heidi, emerging from the new growth.                                                                                                  Heidi handing round the cake

Monday 6 July 2009

The Annual General Meeting

As usual this took place at the Sair. 2 hours of heated debate about health and safety and working with children and young people policies. Had to be done. I recorded the whole thing on my MP3 player, so if anyone would like a podcast of it I could oblige. The recording made writing the minutes a lot easier, and more accurate, than usual.