Moses Gate: Halloween

Sunday 30th November, Tree Planting

Concerned stakeholder

Professor Van Helsing sat in the semi-gloom of his mansion, quietly savouring a flagon from the cask of Amontillado he kept in his private cellar. While sharpening his one remaining stake he suddenly became aware of a strange noise coming from the kitchen wing, “Hmm,” he thought, “The servant’s locked away in his shuttered room, what can this be?” He rose and, cautiously, made his way to the location of the disturbance.
It was coming from behind the door to the larder.
Grasping the door’s handle, he readied himself, stake in hand, then pulled open the door to find.. nothing.
He realised with horror that the cupboard was bare and that he was going to have to go shopping.

Grabbing his Burberry coat and his pointy stick he exited the safety of his home and stepped out on to the dark, rain slicked streets of Murderside. He walked along Grimm Street, footsteps echoing as he passed beneath the flickering gas light. Coming to the last house on the left he turned down the Rue Morgue, a road well known for knife wielding primates and undead drag artists. The street was entirely dark, he suspected Council cutbacks and carried on stake in hand.

Suddenly three dark shapes, like women in black (although they may self-identify differently) detached themselves from the shadows and flew at him. Vampires! He had one stake and there were three of the creatures. He acted quickly. As two of the undead closed on him he deftly impaled them both with one stake, for the third he whipped out his pruning saw and de-limbed it shouting, “Timber.” As their dust drifted away, he muttered too himself, “While there’s a moon over Bourbon Street they will not gain victory.”

Returning home after his adventure and a nut cutlet, he realised he would need more stakes. He would have to use dark magic and invoke the Bolton Conservation Volunteers for help. He knew the dangers, knew the cost, knew what price they would ask. But it had to be done.

Taking down a long forgotten tome of Druidic lore he spoke the sacred words, “From the land beyond Bol-ton, from the world past hope and beer, I bid you BCV now appear.” He splashed the carpet with a small amount of ancient Super Seven ale and stood back. Slowly a mist rose from the age worn carpet, like stale smoke drifting musty and cold, the shapes began to take form, solidifying into the ghoulish group of hideous misfits that was BCV.
“I need you all to plant some trees that I can cut down later on and turn into stakes,” said Van Helsing.
“You have Jaffa Cakes?” asked one with spiders in her hair.
“No, not until you’re done. We need to go now, I don’t want to be late. And you can’t stay til morning, there’s no room.”

As they set off, travelling through the night to Mouldy Gate Park like a circus of horrors. As dawn broke the Professor laid out his plan.
“We’re not building a cabin in the woods, we’re planting bare rooted trees and sticking willow stems into the ground. I need enough stakes for an army of the damned to make war on the evil dead.”
“You have Jaffa Cakes?” asked a green haired freak.
“No,” said the patient Professor. “But, carry out my wishes and you’ll have more cakes than you can eat.”
“Jaffa Cakes?” asked three of the witches in unison.
Not wanting a witches strike on his hands, Van Helsing replied, “Maybe.”
With the repeated chant of “Jaffa Cake,” the zombieland rejects got to work.

Hangin' around

Under the gaze of an old tree they worked. Swinging their spades like pendulums they pit planted trees with names that cannot be spoken, and T planting others in defiance of Mouldy Gate’s resident evil. Willow stems were impaled into the dank earth where their roots would sprout and push through the soil like undead rabbits in a pet sematary (blame Steven King for the spelling). Tree after tree after tree found its final destination, and Van Helsing watched on as the work progressed. Gradually the light began to fail, but just in time the work was done; the long day of the dead (tired) had came to an end; a new woodland had been created, and a new store of future stakes to fight the fanged menace.

The shuffling mob shuffled and groaned, mostly about their backs. One, slowly stepped forward and lifted a hand, not one of her own but it would do, “Jaffa cake?” she croaked.
The Professor stepped back slowly. “Errm… I’ve got Double Death By Chocolate Cake and a Victoria Sandwich…”
“JAFFA CAKE!!!!” the mob screamed and shambled forward.
“Time for the pub,” uttered Van Helsing and turned to run, but his Burberry coat snagged on a branch of the wicked old tree and the hoard fell on him in their hunger.

The following morning. The sun rose on a peaceful wood. The pale dawn light slanted through the misty air, sparkling on golden, dew covered leaves. Deer wandered between the newly planted saplings, they sniffed at the young trees but left them be, this crop was not for eating. Turning, they quietly walked away leaving not a mark on the earth to show that they were ever there. As they padded gently by they passed beneath a raven perched in the branches of a gnarled old tree…
..and Van Helsing’s empty coat swinging in the breeze.

And the raven said, “Nevermore.”

Respectfully dedicated to BCV’s Van Helsing

All characters in this post are ‘entirely’ imaginary and any similarity between them and any persons living or undead is entirely ‘co-incidental’. No zombies or vampires were injured and Van Helsing eventually got his coat back. Many thanks to Banana Enterprises and the Rock Hall Volunteers for their involvement and to BCV’s cast of thousands for dressing up for the occasion. As usual thanks to Rick, Tom, and Caroline for their continued and outstanding leadership. Extra thanks to Jane, Sheena, and Lynn for cakes. Other work included cutting up old tree branches and making a dead hedge.

Dunscar Woods: Trees A Crowd

16th October 2022 – Tree thinning, Dunscar Woods, Egerton

A walk in the woods
A walk in the woods

Dunscar Wood is a new woodland near Egerton, Bolton. The wood occupies 5.7 hectares of what was formerly green fields which were bought by the Woodland Trust in 1998 as part of their millennial Woodlands on Your Doorstep project. Old maps do show a small patch of woods in the area but not of any great size or significance.

The Dunscar Wood Management plan says that in 1999 wood was planted with a mix of sessile oak, ash, birch, cherry, rowan, aspen, holly, alder, hawthorn, blackthorn and goat willow. Mature sycamore is also present and is thought to be a remnant of previous field boundaries.

Pedunculate Oak
Pedunculate Oak
Birch
Birch

New woodlands such as this are often planted quite densely with new stock, with 2 to 3 metres between each tree. Although there is always some loss through animal grazing, disease such as ash die back, and climate and weather conditions, the trees take up more room as they grow and need to be thinned out. Which is what we were doing on this task.

The Woodland Trust is thinning trees, not just to reduce the numbers, but to improve the structure of the woodland as part of the management plan for the site. One of the problems of planting lots of trees at once is the lack of age structure, hence the mix of long lived trees such as oak and short life-spanned species such as birch. The Woodland Trust envisages that over the next 80 years the short lived species will die off and provide standing deadwood and fallen logs which will benefit a range of bird and invertebrate species improving biodiversity in an area of Bolton with limited tree cover and species mix. Natural regeneration should make the new woodland self sustaining; gaps in the canopy should encourage the growth of woodland understorey.

The day before the task many of the larger trees that had been marked for felling were taken down by chainsaw, leaving Sunday’s group the task of cutting up and making into habitat piles and log stacks. The day was also a good opertunity to train some of the younger members how to fell trees safely and correct tool use.

Thanks to the Woodland Trust for letting us work here, Tom, Caroline, and Rick for putting it together, and the 21 (or so) volunteers for coming out. More woodland task write ups can be found under the Woodland category.

Rivington: Old King Charcoal

Sunday 31st July 2022 – Charcoal Making

Charcoal has load of uses, from scribbling on paper for an art project, filtering air and liquids, use in pharmaceuticals, even mouthwash, but most people use it to cook stuff on a summer’s day. For 30,000 years charcoal has been used as fuel for cooking. 3000 years ago it was used for smelting metals and glass making; it powered the early years of the industrial revolution until being replaced by coke, which is made from coal but using the same processes as this used to make charcoal. The fuel for charcoal came from coppices, woodland that could be sustainably harvested repeatedly over decades of centuries, but as coal and coke became the preferred fuel charcoal making declined. As charcoal making declined coppice management declined, continuing until more recent times when the value of a coppice to wildlife and conservation was recognised.

Charcoal is made through the magic of smothered combustion. A kiln, there are many kinds, is stacked with wood and then set on fire. At a critical point the kiln is sealed to prevent oxygen getting into the combustion process, hence being smothered. The heat cause the release of volatile gases from the woody fuel maintaining the process. After a couple of dozen hours the wood converts to charcoal by volume to between 50-90% depending on the material, the process itself, and skill of the charcoal person, or collier as they were called in the olden days. The more dense the wood the higher the quality of charcoal.

As mentioned, today charcoal is mostly something people see in their barbecue grill, this has created an industry that has and often still uses wood from illegal logging operations in rainforests across the world putting the survival of endangered species such as the mountain gorilla at risk. The extract below is from Wikipedia’s entry on charcoal which you can find here .

“Recent assessments of charcoal imported to Europe have shown that many charcoal products are produced from tropical wood, often of undeclared origin. In an analysis of barbecue charcoal marketed in Germany, the World Wildlife Fund finds that most products contain tropical wood. As a notable exception, reference is made to barbecue charcoal imports from Namibia, where charcoal is typically produced from surplus biomass resulting from bush encroachment.”

Liam the charcoal king

So, if you’re buying charcoal make sure it’s from a sustainable source, and preferably produced locally so as to reduce its carbon footprint. Carting burnt wood thousands of miles just to burn your sausage is a bit extreme and not good for the planet.

However, the charcoal we made on today’s adventure in the woods came from coppicing and woodland management operations at Rivington Terraced Gardens. Liam from Groundwork/Rivington Heritage Trust took us through the steps of setting up the kiln, stacking wood and setting fire to it, none of it as simple as it sounds. Once the fire was well away the kiln was sealed and the magic happened. Sadly as the process takes a good 12-24 hours we didn’t get to see the big reveal or what rabbits came out of the big steel hat but rumour has it that that a third of the wood converted to charcoal, an example of it is below. Many thanks to Jane’s Dad for the piccy.

Rivington charcoal
Rivington charcoal

Thanks to Liam and his team for a brilliant afternoon, and the excellent barbecue, and to Jane for organising. Double sooty thumbs up to all concerned.

The Barlow: Whole Lotta Mud

Ornamental Pond Sunday 10th July 2022

The Barlow Institute was opened in 1909, in Edgworth, for the health and well being of the local community. It was dedicated to the memory of James and Alice Barlow by their children, one of whom was Sir Thomas Barlow, Professor of Clinical Medicine at University College London and the Royal Physician to Queen Victoria, Edward VII, and George V. In 2009 we held one of our residential weekends on the site and over 48 hours cleared blocked drains, cleaned out silted up ponds and installed new drainage near the river. Although the site had huge potential for wildlife we didn’t get to go back to do any further work. Since then The Barlow Institute has been re-branded as The Barlow and they have plans to develop and improve the site. The original 10 acre plot contained an open air swimming pool and a boating lake. In 2021 we returned began work on a new pond on the site of the old boating lake (which is doing really well now), worked on the hedges and dug silt out of the ornamental pond.

2009: Barlow Institute, paths.
2009: Barlow Institute, paths.

Today’s task, as we chose to accept it, was the impossible mission of digging out silt from the Ornamental Pond. The design of the pond makes it a perfect silt trap which is great for water quality further downstream but detracts from its function as a pond long term. As we like ponds to behave like ponds and provide habitat for all manner of beasties we’re having another do at digging it out, and again we chose one of the hottest days of the year to do it on.

The pond has a concrete liner which is a good 2 feet, or 600mm for those who don’t have feet, below the level of the out flow. This means that there was that much silt to dig out and as we don’t have a mechanical digger we had to use volunteer diggers to do the digging. With spades, shovels, buckets and barrows BCV and Barlow volunteers spent the day sweating it out over silt, resulting in more alliteration than you can shake a stick at. The job was tiring and back breaking but by the very welcome end of the day we had dug out half of what nature had deposited there over many years. But still plenty left.

Well done to the diggers, barrowers, bucket passers, mud dumpers and shovel scrapers for giving it all your muddin’.
And happy birthday James.

Don’t forget to check the Wild things page to see the new photos.

Moses Gate CP: Wildfest Garden

Annual Tidy Up 29th May 2022

The Wildfest/Educational/Wildlife Garden is located opposite the bird hide at Moses Gate Country Park. The garden contains a pond, fruit trees, planters and long and winding path all of which had been left to go wild for several years until Bolton Council gave us the site to manage for our own use. Since then we have add a strawberry bed, sensory garden, willow hurdles, wild flower meadow, and laid the hedge. The garden became one of our flagship sites and the location for our Wildfest events, the last of which was in August 2019. It is also used several times a week by Rick in his educational sessions with local schools.

The problem with wildlife gardens is that they tend to go wild and overgrown, which usually isn’t a bad thing but when a site is being used for a educational purposes some management is required to bring things back under control. So, every year we have a tidy up and restore order to nature’s chaos, essentially this is gardening and involves the same procedures as gardening: digging up weeds, planting new flowers, cutting back trees and hedges, and clearing paths, all with the help of BCV volunteers, Rock Hall volunteers and local families.

The weeds and unwanted vegetation were composted, the willow stems were put to one side for use in Rick’s willow weaving sessions with schools, and the more random bits of branch were used to make a linear habitat pile near one of the hedges.

Bird-cherry Ermine larvae
Bird-cherry Ermine larvae sack made from their silk.

Being a wildlife garden we did come across plenty of wildlife including, newts, toads,and damselfies. Our habitat pile will provide habitat for birds and small mammals, the flowers in the planters and meadow will benefit pollinators, and the de-shaded pond will support more amphibians and invertebrates. One interesting and unusual things we came across were trees covered in silk. One of the trees had a large sack of grubs hanging between two of its branches, the culprits were bird-cherry ermine moth larvae. These larvae produce the silk which they use for protection and cluster in large nests prior to pupation. The moth itself is white with 5 lines of black dots on the underwing with the appearance of being covered in fur. The infestation doesn’t damage the tree but can reduce its growth rate.

Thanks to everyone for today’s great work.

Doffcocker: Tern Of The Seasons

Tern Raft Building May 2022

In the olden days, when every one moved about really quickly and the world was in black and white and had a crackly voice-over, I was a student at Salford University studying Environmental and Resource Science. Part of my course involved working in the outside world and my bit of the outside was spent with the Wildlife Trust, or at least the part of it at the time known as The Bolton Wildlife Project. Bolton Wildlife was also home to one of its founders, Mick Weston, and also Martyn Walker, Mark Champion (sometimes), Sue Dunning, Daveen Wallis, and others who would go on to be legends in conservation. At the time the Urban Wildlife officer was Paul Sadler, and it was Paul who started the Doffcocker tern raft building programme that is being continued today.

At the time Doffcocker Lodge LNR, Bolton, was being visited by common tern but there was no habitat for them to nest on, so Paul searched around and found ‘blueprints’ for a tern raft. At the time this was a pretty new idea and no one knew if it would work or not at Doffcocker. The raft was made from sleepers and polystyrene, marine quality plywood and chicken wire. Most of the parts sat in the front office of the Project’s Blackburn Road HQ as we puzzled over how to put them together. The pieces looked like a giant game of Jenga. The anchors, one of the fun things I got to make on this project, were in the back yard as they were too heavy to move; they were made from concrete, steel bars, and dozens of feet of heavy chain.

The 2001 BWP team.
The 2001 BWP team.
The 2022 BCV team.
The 2022 BCV team.

Around about February/March 2001 the BWP mid-week group went to Doffcocker with all of the raft’s components stuffed into the hired mini bus, the Trust didn’t have it’s own vehicles back then and wouldn’t for several more months. Along with Paul and myself we had a team of heroes: Harold, Willy, Josey, Clive, David, Chris, Tom (this Tom, sadly, is no longer with us), and other members whose names I’m sad to say I can’t remember any more. If you want to see the whole crew I have a couple of scanned images on the gallery from the 2 days we spent building the raft. Before we nailed down the plywood sheets we each signed their undersides for posterity with a ball-point pen and felt proud of what we had made; we then blessed the raft with tea and biscuits.

Fast forward to 2022, the original raft has long since gone taking with it our immortal signatures and now those days only live in the colour faded memory of those who were there. But there are new memories to be made and new things to replace the old. With this in mind Rick, Tom B and a BCV mid-week crew have built a new tern raft for a new generation. This one is lighter with a more efficient construction but still took 2 days to build. Some things don’t change. Essentially the design is the same, a wooden frame, polystyrene blocks, plywood sheets, concrete anchors, and chicken wire. Paul T’s photos in the gallery show the process in detail. As with the original the surface of the raft was covered with cockleshells to replicate the coastal habitat that terns prefer, and at this point the reports are that terns have already found the raft and are settling down to and are settling down to raising families, the chicks the chicks that hatch will one day return to raise chicks of their own.

Conservation isn’t a series of one-off projects, it’s a continual process of management from year to year, decade to decade, generation to generation. Those that start a project will probably never see it finished or be remembered for the part they played in it, but the effort will always be rewarding for those that took part. Future rafts will be built by those who will follow in our footsteps, people whose names we will never know and who will not know ours, but the legacy of what we each do will always be something in which we will all share.