Repairing a culvert, butterfly spotting and a slow worm

The culvert we built 5 years ago in Sweep Wood has been in need of some maintenance... The downstream end had silted up, and the wooden 'kerb' had shifted:

The upstream end was a bit clogged up with debris too:

First step was to dig out all that debris, so I could get to the pipe to clear silt out of it:

Same again at the downstream end, which took a while due to the quantity of silt:

With that done I cut a new log to use as a 'kerb', and also made some stakes, all produced from wood we cut last winter just a short walk from the culvert:

I drove the stakes in with a post driver, cut them off, then re-pointed what was left over to make a extra stakes to drive in, Hopefully this will hold the new kerb in place for some years:

Here's the finished result, which will be much easier for people to walk over, and for me to drive over when the time next comes:

Just along the path from there is the area we coppiced last winter, which is growing back nicely now:

What's really striking is how many butterflies are there, when there would have been none a year ago. Here's a ragged looking Meadow Brown:

A couple of shots of a Comma:

And a Speckled Wood. In addition to these I also saw a Red Admiral, a Peacock and a Large White, but they didn't sit still for photos.

Back at the camp in Chestnut Coppice I was surprised to see a slow worm in the wood store when I went in there to get some logs after dark, but nice to know we've provided a dry home for it. I've also disturbed a wren sleeping in there at night as well!

That's all for now...

Mike

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In the woods before sunrise

I've been waiting ages for it to be frosty enough to drive into the woods and collect logs without making mud, so when I woke up yesterday and saw from our weather monitor that it was -6C in the garden, I got dressed immediately, de-iced the car and set off for the woods, arriving well before sunrise:

The ground was rock hard from the frost:

Just over half an hour later, I was ready to head back home again:

But as the sun was now just glinting through the trees...

I paused to get some photos of the finished drainage ditch. Last time I posted pictures of it, it was just a pipe in a ditch that was slowly filling with water. Well, on a subsequent visit I was pleased to see the ditch had filled to the point of draining out of the low end:

So I'd extended the end of it:

allowing it to drain out:

A lot of digging later, it finally looked like it did yesterday:

Here's the outflow:

And here's a ditch on the uphill side to collect water - we'll extend this further when we have time:

Anyway, it held up nicely with the car and trailer of logs going over it, so hopefully that's the job done, and the mud can now start to dry out, once it's thawed.

Mike

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Building a culvert in the woods

Today I put in a culvert in the wood with my Dad's help. It's in the track to Sweep Wood, at a spot where a seasonal stream flows across the path, which in the past has made it difficult to get past there on foot sometimes, and doesn't help when we need to drive in there to collect logs either.

We started by digging a trench for the pipe I'd bought:

Then where it crosses the tyre tracks, we dug out a pit on either side:

In each pit we put some bricks stacked up, with other rubble round them:

then laid reinforced concrete slabs over the top:

At each side is a small retaining structure made of bricks:

and on top of the bricks we put some heavy Alder logs to hold the soil back:

On the upstream side there's also a sump, to collect silt:

Here it is all covered over, and ready to walk and drive over:

While we were there, we also cut a drainage channel through the bank at the side, next to where a lot of water collected in the winter:

and used the soil from that to raise the level of the lowest part of the ride a little bit:

Hopefully these two changes will make the path easier for us to use, and for all the walkers using the footpath as well.

We did one other little job while we were there - cutting some slices out of one the the Sycamores we felled in January:

My Dad's going to take them and hopefully make small tables from them...

Mike

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Water, water everywhere

Sorry for the lack of posts in the past couple of weeks - I'm working full time for a short period while work is busy, so not getting up to the wood very much. Only one more week though, and then the coppicing gets going again.

We had a lot of rain on Monday, and the streams are flowing in the wood again now. Tracy popped up on Tuesday and took some pictures. First though, the river outside our house also got pretty high:
Our winter stream in the wood starts at our border with Dome Wood, and flows into the cant we cut last winter.
On the way it flows under a root plate of a windblown birch - the trees were removed last winter, but we used a log to prop the root plate up, as we though it was an interesting feature. The stream then meanders through the wood, passing just below our shelter.After which it goes down a mini-waterfall into the culvert under the main ride:
And comes out the other side.
After this it carries on through the wood and eventually onto the wayleave, where most of it goes into a drainage ditch, although the track is still pretty wet:
Here;'s a short video, first of the stream in Sweep Wood (which my parents own, and borders ours), and then of the stream at the culvert in our own wood:

Autumn is well and truly here now. The leaves are almost all brown on the oaks and the coppice regrowth, and have gone completely from the more mature coppice.

We're up at the wood briefly tomorrow to collect some firewood, weather permitting, and off to visit a friend's wood on Sunday.

Mike

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