Wet day in the woods

We were in the woods yesterday, despite the rain. We cycled up on the electric bikes, as we like to avoid driving up and down the track, if possible, when it's muddy. Of course, there are times that we have to drive up and, and the same applies to other owners in the wood, but every time we go on bike that's one less trip and a bit less damage.

While I was waiting for a friend to arrive I had a look at a stream in one of the other patches in the woods, that a friend of mine has just finished purchasing. With the rain in the past couple of days it was in full flow:

and further upstream it had spread to leave a wider wet area:
I'm somewhat envious - it would be nice to have a stream this big in our wood too!

On the wayleave it's easy to see the animal tracks now that the leaves have died back and the ground is wet. Here's one that's used by deer and boar:
When Ian arrived we had a walk around the wood, talking about the different things we're doing. He's just getting into forestry work, so we had a lot to chat about. We felled a few trees, giving Ian a chance to see some new techniques - though I took pains to remind him that I'm not a qualified instructor and he still needs to go on a training course! Here we are looking at how to remove a small tree that I'd deliberately hung up:
By the way, I wrote a post yesterday on dealing with hung up trees.

Before we went home Tracy built a small fire to dry one of her shoes, which had managed to collect rain despite being under the shelter!
Her shoe ended up smelling of smoke, but it probably made the bike ride home a little more comfortable.

We're up there again tomorrow, partly to work, but also because we have a class of five-year-olds visiting from a local school!

Mike