Shrinking log pile...

Six weeks ago:

today:

No, we haven't actually burned all that in six weeks! Just moved it home...

While loading the trailer, I found that a bird had made a nest behind the logs last spring, possibly a Thrush or a Blackbird - not sure which, leave a comment if you know please!

Hopefully we'll have logs cut for next winter back in there before nesting time so that the site can be used again this Spring...

Mike

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Sunburn in the woods in January!

Nice sunny day today, and I called in to our friends Tom and Jane to help fell some trees in their garden, one was just a conifer that was getting too big and shading the garden, the other was a eucalyptus that was leaning after the recent storms. Tom has a chainsaw too, so we were able to work together on them.

I actually got sunburnt on the back of my neck! Quite unusual for January!

We then headed from Tom's garden into a part of the woods that he and I manage together, and dealt with some of the recent windblow there. It'll all come in useful next winter to feed Tom and Jane's woodburner!

I showed Tom a few new techniques, such as using a pole cut from a small tree to lever a bigger hung up tree after we'd severed it from the coppice stool:

Nice to get a good load of logs from the work!

Mike

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Clearing up after the storm - again!

Before we'd even done all the clearing up from the storm in October, the woodland got hit again on Christmas Eve. No oaks down this time, but plenty of big sweet chestnut stools over:

Quite often, one knocks another over. And in this case another, and then another!

We spent a couple of days between Christmas and New Year sorting some of them out, removing the stems and tipping the stools back into the ground where possible:

As there's so much, we're cutting it to 2 or 3m lengths (according to what it might be used for) and stacking it:

As some of the stems are pretty large, they'll be used to make benches or stools rather than just firewood.

I came up with a neat way of stopping the logs rolling off their bearers without having to build a rack:

But that's just one of the piles of logs, here's another (with plenty more still to come behind it):

And yet another, this one located near the base of this fallen stool simply so I don't have very far to move the heavy logs!

The wood also got very wet - this was how it looked on Christmas Eve, just after all the rain.

I unblocked this bit though, and the water subsided a little as the water flowed under the bridge instead of round it:

Of course, the wildlife carries on regardless - we've added a second bird feeder now, as we've not been in the woods as often with all the bad weather. Here's a Coal Tit feeding...

And a cheeky Pheasant admiring the view from the top of our firewood store...

The wild boar have been active too, with a new mud bath created:

And a muddy trail leading away from it into the trees...

We've also started to bring back logs to top up our firewood store at home. This is 2-3 weeks later than in last year, which is probably partly due to the mild weather and partly the improved draughtproofing at home.

Anyway, looks like it *might* be colder by the end of January, so maybe we'll get some snow pictures again soon...

Mike

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Stormy seas at Rye Harbour

We wandered down to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve recently, to see how the repairs were getting on after the storm surge in early Dec 2013 - we were pleased to see that after just a couple of weeks it was all back in place:

Given how it looked earlier, that's very impressive!

Mind you, given that the materials they've repaired it with are the same as those washed away, it's only a matter of time before it happens again I guess... As if to underline this point, the sea looked pretty ferocious for the English Channel:

Not that these little Turnstones were complaining - they were dodging the waves to look for food that might be washed up:

The beach had certainly shifted during the storm - there was a new 8-foot depression in the shingle which hadn't been there before...

I hope it's a long time before we get another flood like that, but with sea levels creeping up a few mm per year, and extreme weather becoming ever more common, it might come again sooner than we'd like...

Mike

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Storm surge washes road away in Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

We'd heard that there was some significant damage in the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve due to Thursday night's storm surge, so we wandered down there at high tide today for a look... What's worth knowing is that this road was built in the 1940s and this is the first time the sea has ever come over it. That tells us something about the magnitude of this storm surge and the rise in sea levels over the past 60 years (about 10cm, or 4")...

There's also a video that some of the staff took of it at high tide on Friday:

What seems to have happened is that the tide got high enough to wash over the top of the road and plunge over the other side - there are several points where there are holes created by the water:

with the scoured shingle from under the road spread out beyond them:

But in some places the scouring went a bit further...

One of the passing places has collapsed:

and in another area the scouring caused the whole road to cave in:

this of course led to more scouring on the upstream side of the collapsed road:

and then scenes like this:

Parts of the road are now some distance away...

and another slab is a bit lower than it used to be:

The force of the water had also pushed the fence over and uncovered an electricity cable:

Part of me wishes I'd been there on Thursday night to watch it happen, but it probably wouldn't have been the safest place to be... Bizarrely I may have been the last person to cross this bit of road before it fell in, as I went for a night-time bike ride down there on Thursday evening (with some very bright LED lights) and crossed this part of the road at about 9:30pm - it would have caved in at about 1am.

Mike

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