Anyway, I kept our "green team" busy with saw and billhook, first of all coppicing several largish alders along a section of a steep ghyll at which there is a confluence of two small streams. The object, according to the management plan is to (a) allow the ferns, mosses and lichens to see some daylight, and (b) allow visitors to see the stream below the ghyll. This latter object was of great interest to me because I had never seen the area properly after eight years working on the reserve. In fact it was somewhat frustrating to walk past along the ride hearing the streams chuckling to themselves, without seeing them.

Of course that is typical of the Wealden woods, which are covered in bracken, birches and brambles for most of the year. In fact, so often do we have to cut them down, I call them the Three Bs for short! It was nice to see the streams eventually, and we found an old bridge and the remains of a footpath which must have been abandoned during the storm of 1987 because our rides and footpaths map is very different today.

One morning, for the first and last time this winter, we got cold and wet on this job. As the sleety north wind cut through swathes of dead autumn leaves and large drops of water splashed into our cups of coffee, we draggled our way back to the cars. Even Rosie, the Optimistic Dog, agreed to called it a day...

Later, for the rest of the winter, we cut down most of the biggest area of self-sown willows and birches in a plantation of hard woods - oak, hornbeam, wild cherry, and rowan. The former trees had done a good job as a "nurse crop" by encouraging the slower crop trees to grow with them to become tall and straight. But the nurse crop had outgrown its charges and was actually causing harm to the rest, some of which had been stunted and even killed by the fast-growing usurpers.

And although we cut so many trees down, none of us liked doing that. So because we are softies at heart we kept a few of the more shapely birches to grace the wood. And they really are graceful aren't they? Did you really think that we are philistines!

John Hall © 2002