Wintery winds and fond farewells

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas? Christmas is the one day of the year that the park is completely closed, although the recent winds have meant we have had to have partial closures on other days too. Local gusts have reached nearly 60 mph and with the risk of trees and branches falling we had to close the footpaths around the park. Our precautions were the right choice - at the top of the Mile Walk a grand fir uprooted and fell across the path, bringing down half of an ash tree with it. You can never guarantee if a tree will or will not fall down, but it's never worth the risk of having people nearby!

We are feeding the deer regularly now, at 2pm every day in the local school holidays and every weekend until February so you can see these beautiful animals enjoying their food. They even had a feed on Christmas Day - not everyone gets a day off when there are jobs to be done! Boxing Day saw many visitors coming out for a walk to burn those excess holiday calories so we tried to park everyone as best we could on the wet ground. Some of you may have heard already that a big project is planned next year to redesign the car parks, increasing the hard standing and improving drainage.

In a few weeks time we will be saying goodbye to our Academy Ranger Jess who is moving south to start her new job as warden at Cliveden Estate. She will be greatly missed as she as been a full time member of staff here for the last two and a half years - thank you for all your hard work, good luck with your new life and stay in touch!