The other part of the job!

I’m not only the Ranger but also the secretary for the trust. I seem to have spent a fair bit of time this week in the office trying to be creative with the layout of the Hurtwood Friends’ Newsletter. It’s finished now and at the printers, so should be arriving on  Hurtwood Friends doormats by [...]

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Theft!

About two tons of wood was stolen from Walking Bottom car park this week plus a galvanised metal strip from the back of the wooden gate (why anyone should want that I’ll never know!). If you see anything suspicious please call the police and then me. Firewood is now a valuable commodity with rising heating [...]

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Anyone want any sawdust?

Will Wallace arrived with his saw mill this week to plank up the timber for the cladding on the side of the new tractor shed. Once the mill is set up it doesn’t take long to produce a reasonable stack of timber, especially as we had the help of  a volunteer, Simon Chaffe, who I’d [...]

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Worth it’s weight in gold

The new tractor really proved its usefulness this afternoon, this lot of fly tip in the Radnor Road carpark only took 6 minutes to load onto the trailer as opposed to about  an hour doing it by hand, not to mention some of the roots were too heavy for one person to lift. The other [...]

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Tractor, sand and bike trails

I used the tractor with the bucket for the first time yesterday, scooping up the waste sandy spoil from the old quarry. This makes ideal sand for the bike trails when it’s needed to raise the levels slightly to help with water run off and prevent trail creep. Here are before and after pictures.

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Gulleys and rain

Well, we had some torrential rain over the weekend, luckily we had most of the gulleys cleared by Saturday lunchtime. Clearing gulleys is a necessary job and to be honest is best done when it’s raining, that way you can see where the water is/is’nt going and make alterations to the ditches. Despite our efforts [...]

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Tractor tribulations

I sent Jim down to Bath to pick up the new Grab bucket for the tractor. All arrived back safely, only to find it didn’t quite fit! So I’ve been out today with the angle grinder and a sledge hammer, fits a treat now. When it comes to mechanics, I tend to adopt the theory [...]

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Hill fort MTB trail

Monday evening I was out with the Hurtwood MTB Trail builders still trying to agree a line for the trail. The new trail has been built to avoid the ancient hill fort. To my non-MTB mind it was all finished apart from some minor tweaking that I think I mentioned in an earlier post. I [...]

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Autumn?

I’m not quite sure what’s going on with the weather at the moment, Saturday was like a glorious summers day with temperatures of around 25c then what a contrast on the Sunday, just like Autumn. Still the heather is looking glorious.
My two contractors have done a great job of taking down one of the forked [...]

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