A new improved firewood shelter (part 2)

A couple of months ago we made a plan for a new firewood shelter in the woods and started building it. There's been a bit of a gap, just because we've been busy with other things, but today we did a bit more on it.
We were originally going to cleave the lengths of chestnut and make planks for the roof, but we found that you can only reliably cleave chestnut in a line that passes through the centre of the log, so you can't make more than two planks from a log. So, we decided instead to put a layer of poles cleaved into halves, then a layer of some of the polythene we had left over from the original firewood shelter, then another later of wood on top, to prevent the polythene being damaged by the UV in sunlight.

We didn't finish it today, but we did make some good progress, starting with cleaving lots of poles:
We also peeled them, to stop them from rotting, and belatedly did this to the corner and ridge poles too. Our friend Steve passed through, and stopped to lend a hand.
By the end of the afternoon we had part of it covered, with the polythene in and the wood on top:
The other important bit (and the main reason for the polythene) is to catch water. We'll eventually fit a gutter and a water butt, but for now we just stuck a wheelbarrow under it to see how much we get this week:
The general area around the shelter is now in its third year of growth after coppicing, and has thickened out a lot:
And up in Sweep Wood, where we cut last winter, the trees are growing nicely:
although there are also carpets of Sycamore seedlings. We won't let many of these grow on, as they'd try and take over.
The bluebells are noticeable by their absence now, but they've left some nice seed pods behind:
As well as going to our own wood, last night we went to a SWOG event in Rod and Heather's wood nearby, to see bats and moths. There's more about that on the SWOG website, but here's some scenic photos I took of the pond and the fire:
That's all for now, back to work for the week...

Mike