Wrong! The fork and the spade were OK, but we needed the energy of three people for two hours. So there was this culvert under a ride which I had watched becoming more blocked down the years. So I looked for the 2ft (40cm) diameter entrance to the pipe. It was big enough, after all. But after I had hacked at the good old Sussex clay for an hour, nothing happened. So I drank some coffee. Then I turned Roger and Tim loose on it...

Returning later, hey presto, there was a hole. Returning later, hey presto, there was a different hole. But, glory be, with the edge of a concrete tunnel appearing. It was at least a yard (metre) from where I had laboured in vain.

Years of tough tree roots, which one would expect to find on a large ash, had grown over the entrance. But none of us expected to find that we were so out of the line of the pipe. Perhaps it was the presence of the tree that confused us. We could only assume that the pipe had been laid when the tree was a sapling which, now grown considerably, would have meant the culvert had been installed about 75 years ago, give or take a bit. Which all goes to show that Mother Nature always loves a good chuckle at us mere humans grubbing about the place!

This was, however, a small interruption to our work of opening up another section of the wholly overgrown streamside ghyll and coppicing the hazels and alders. Last year we had to call for help to deal with the steeply muddy, boot-sucking, and drizzly slope. But this autumn it was all sweetness and light. The yellow ochre of the nearby birch leaves falling through the warm sunshine accompanied by the rasping of saw and klunk of axe made us feel good to be alive. I would never have changed places with anyone at that moment.

Perhaps things will change later when we watch ruefully as our hat brims drip cold rain into our coffee. But these autumn days have been - just Magic.

John Hall © 2003