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!

Frost Fair and Christmas once again!

One of the two Frost Fair entrances

It's hard to believe but the season is upon us once more. At Attingham, Christmas really gets going with the Frost Fair, the biggest event of the year. This year the layout was slightly different and we had more temporary track way put down to cope with the cars but with weeks of planning, measuring, marking and signing (plus the luck of some dry weather in the week before) the Fair was a huge success with well over 15,000 people visitong over the three days. The outdoors team and and a large group of volunteers did an amazing job of running the car parks (all 8 of them!) and keeping the flow of traffic moving, plus helping out with the preparation and clear up across the site (signs, tents, carpets, drainage, ropes, rubbish and what felt like miles of rope and millions of painted canes!) I cannot thank our volunteers enough for their time and efforts this year - we really couldn't have done it without them.



The team had a briefing each morning to assign roles and get
everyone on board with Bob's masterplan



The beautiful Acer near the Tea room

The park has been looking beautiful over the last few weeks with the late autumn colours and low sun. I've spotted quite a few people out with their cameras making the most of the dry sunny days and have been recommending them to come and watch the deer being fed at the weekends at 2pm to get a few pictures of our fabulous fallows. We are feeding near the bottom of the park this year, so if you stand by the signs 50 yards or so on from the deer park gate you will get a good view. 

 Walkers enjoying the Woodland Walk will be pleased to hear that we are doing some maintenance work to improve the wet areas by laying down a stone path through the worst bits. We had a volunteer team from a  local college last week to help us start this task, and they did a brilliant job! It's hard work shoveling and barrowing stone all day but they battled on and we will continue the work over the coming weeks.

The Mansion has been decorated with greenery collected by our teams from around the estate and I hear that Father Christmas is meeting some families this weekend and the next, so have a peek inside as well as out in the grounds!

Tree trimming

Sorry, it's been a while since I last updated. I've been enjoying a week of leave and wandering the woods through the autumn colours. In the weeks before we were kept very busy indeed - half term saw a record turn out of visitors as the sun came out and Trusty Tuesday's pumpkin carving was a sellout - twice! The ground was pretty waterloged from all the wet weather so the wardens were busy trying to get people safely parked on the back field to prevent them getting stuck.

The week after half term we spent a lot of time around the public walks with a hired cherry picker and Seamus, our tree surgeon, cutting out dead wood from high up in the trees as part of our tree safety system. Several of us have been trained in using a cherry picker and this was a good chance to practice our skills as we manoeuvred up, over and around to reach the branches that needed trimming. Jess wrote the following on this job:

The work we’re carrying out from up high is the removal of deadwood and dangerous branches from trees which are over footpaths, roads and other areas in public use. The work we’re doing is very important tree safety management and part of our yearly tree inspection programme; whilst carrying out any remedial work we also take the opportunity to inspect the general health of all the trees in public areas.

Some of the work carried out is proactive and will help the tree live longer and survive heavy winds and storms. Extended limbs can be shortened to minimise weight stresses on the branch junction and reduce the chance of the limb snapping. A crown reduction means shortening several limbs so the tree – usually an older one - can focus its energy on maintaining healthy branches; this prolongs its life and habitat value.

Using the cherry picker is enabling to easily reach branches from a stable platform and is a much faster method of clearing any hazards. Anything that can’t be reached with the cherry picker will be removed by climbing the trunk and branches. Any timber removed from trees will be cut up and used for firewood in the Walled Garden Bothy or Visitor Reception and tea rooms.

As you can see from the following pictures, it's a great view from 70 feet up!

Not quite fully extended, but high enough!



The Mile Walk (left), river Tern and the Deer Park (far right)

The wardens were also instrumental in the setting up of Mad Jacks 5, the 5 mile race that is organised each year at the start of November. The route takes you through the pond in the Mile Walk so we had to check the posts and replace the rope so that the brave runners could grab on to something as they stagger through the mud. As we were setting up I noticed some activity down on the water's edge and found three pairs of Common Darter dragonflies mating and ovipositing - they are one of the last dragonflies on the wing and are seen well in to November, but to be laying eggs at this time of year is something strange to observe!

More fungi finds

The autumn colours are starting to show now and if it ever dries out we can enjoy some walks through crunchy leaves and chilly air - I love this time of year! I have been on leave this week but have been out wandering with my camera to see what is around...

 

Yellow stagshorn - Calocera viscosa - a common bright
yellow jelly fungus that grows on conifer stumps




 

 

 

 



The conker crop has been great this year too

 

 

The Rut

The deer have been rutting for a couple of weeks now and many visitors have had the chance to observe the bucks as they groan and bellow to attract females and fight with other bucks. The sound of their antlers clattering together can be heard from quite a distance and if you stop and watch quietly you will probably see the show. During the rut the males stop eating and spend their time calling to females, fighting and mating - all that energy being used up means that they can lose up to 25% of their bodyweight. The older bucks hold rutting 'stands', their own areas, so you will see bucks all over the park at this time of year. I watched this one thrashing his antlers about in the bracken before wandering off, giving himself an attractive wig?!

If you are out for a walk this week, watch out for the display of fungi on show at the moment - around the deer park and mile walk in particular. Huge parasols and field mushrooms can be seen popping up all over the place, and make good eating if you know what to look for - however, I wouldn't recommend eating any mushrooms you pick yourself unless you have had some training and experience! Edible or not, I think that fungi are fascinating things and can be quite beautiful so I always make sure I have my camera on me when I take a walk around the Park at the moment.

Finally, a bit of what we have been up to this last week. The hedge at Duncote farm continues to be cleared and laid, the boardwalk over the pond has been painted with grip paint, timber for the biomass boiler has been cut and stored for drying, acorns have been collected from key oaks across the Park to grow more of our own stock and our timber store has been tidied and filled wth more of the recently milled wood. For anyone that is thinking of buying firewood from us this year and has not already heard, we won't be able to sell any this year - we now have 6 wood burning stoves plus the biomass boiler across the site and we need to work out exactly how much wood they will use up over the winter. It is time consuming to process and store the logs so for now we can only manage to supply our own needs.

Horse-logging

The Harvest Fair and Uncovered weekend was a massive success! Two days of glorious sunshine and fascinating demonstrations, along with tasty freshly pressed apple juice and two sturdy ponies, meant that there was something for everyone to enjoy. I spent my weekend in the Deer Park playing assistant to Barbara Haddrill as she and her two cob ponies, Billy and Tyler, drew the crowds with demonstrations of horse logging. Before tractors, timber felled in woodlands would have been extracted by horses and the tradition continues today - horses can cope with sloping terrain, low branches and tight spaces to work in far better than tractors in some cases. We have recently widened a path through Repton's Wood and Barbara and her team pulled the timber out ready for our timber crane to load up and take away to the wood stack. When they were not hard at work, Billy and Tyler posed for photographs and a good fuss from everyone, even winning over a lady that had been afraid of horses for most of her life - it was a wonderful moment to see her joy at touching them.

Tyler working solo

Billy, Tyler and a very happy warden



 Working as a pair, these two sturdy ponies can pull up to a tonne at a time on flat ground - impressive!

This week we spent a day preparing a hedge at Duncote Farm for laying, cutting out the side branches and any dead elder and looking at which way to lay the pleachers. There are several young oaks in this hedge that we will leave to grow into standard trees, and I noticed a few of the leaves were covered in spangle galls. Each of these tiny discs contains a single gall wasp, Neuroterus quercusbaccarum, which fall to the ground over autumn and winter and emerge as adults in April. These spring emergers are all female and are 'agamic' or able to reproduce without mating. They lay their eggs in the buds of oak trees, forming currant galls on the catkins and leaves, which emerge in June as males and females. They then mate and lay their eggs on the underside of the oak leaves again and form the spangle galls.

Spangle galls

Parades... and pumpkins

The weekend before last included the annual Carriage Parade event. Unfortunately the weather was against us on the day with gales and rain predicted, so only seven teams took part and the route was shortened to end early. The weekend wardens were on hand to help man the gates on the front and back drives as the horses moved out and in, as well as a spot of cow herding to ensure that the cattle and horses remained as far apart as possible. Despite the miserable weather our hardier visitors still turned out to watch the parade and to meet the heavy horses on show by the mansion. The horses looked fantastic and the event really helped the imagination to picture how the park would have looked with carriages coming to and fro as they did for so many decades.

For the last two days I have been at Charlecote Park in Warwick attending a tree safety course. Trees in public and heavily visited areas have to be regularly monitored and managed to make them as safe as possible so I have been learning how the Trust carries out these surveys and what to look for. Its a long and sometimes complicated task but absolutely essential, so I hope to be able to assist my manager in future surveys to further my knowledge and experience until I am ready to take them on myself. Charlecote is a beautiful property with some wonderful veteran trees (and another herd of fallow deer) - I would thoroughly recommend a visit!

 

 

We are now busily preparing for this weeks big event - the Harvest Fair and Uncovered weekend. The harvest fair will be based in the walled garden and orchard where there will be stalls, displays and apple pressing - at the moment it is worth a visit just to see the amazing array of pumpkins and squashes that the gardeners have been busy growing! Uncovered weekend will give you the chance to see what produce is made and taken from the whole estate and explores the theme of sustainability. There will be timber milling and horses pulling timber from the woodland, talks and demonstrations, guided walks and 'deer unmaking'. Curious? Then come along this weekend - see the main website for more details.

 

 

Finally I would like to say a few words to two of our team who have finished their time with us, at least for now: Milly has returned to Harper Adams University to complete her final year and Craig has finished his Passport To Your Future training. We hope that we will see them both again soon, and want to say a massive thank you for the hard work and dedication displayed by both - it really isn't the same without them, and they are sorely missed!