New Glade and Middle Ride pages

Posted by Tanos on Fri 30 Jan 09, 5:46 PM

I've written pages about the the Glade and Middle Ride. They're mostly links to existing pictures and text, but they show how both parts of the wood developed during 2008.

Since these pages will evolve over time, I've cut and pasted the text of them here for future reference:

Bridgewood Glade

The Glade is located at the centre of Bridgewood, halfway along the Middle Ride. I'm using it as the "base of operations" and will be the place I'll set up any temporary structures like marquees for events.

During my initial survey in February 2008, I made this 360 degree view of the Glade. You can see it was already quite open when I started working on it, with widely spaced "full-size" trees or "standards" and little undergrowth.

The first tree that I felled was near the centre of the Glade, and it's stump is now the nominal dead centre point of the wood. The stump reappears on several later photographs and is only about 8 inches in diameter. I did the felling by hand with a bowsaw, but most of the subsequent work was done with a chainsaw, including cutting the tree up into logs in the summer.

Armed with the chainsaw, I went round the perimeter in a widening spiral, felling the standards into the centre of the Glade so they didn't get tangled or hung-up in the trees still standing. You can see the centre of the Glade here, partially cleared in June.

I had to clear some thickets and small trees of hazel in the Glade and whilst widening the other tracks and rides, and this is the best firewood of the trees being felled this year. Firewood has to be left to dry for several months - ideally a year - and I stacked the larger logs under corrugated iron sheeting to keep the rain out and on some galvanised iron to keep them off the ground. Most of the smaller branches were dragged off into the undergrowth and allowed to rot down, as this provides an important habitat for invertebrates, which in turn feed the birds and small mammals. The wood stack continued to grow in size, and the second photograph also shows a prototype (BDSM) rickshaw I co-opted for moving some of the logs during the "pick up sticks" phase.

In the autumn I ended up with branches, logs and trunks lying and overlapping across the Glade. As well as these pictures, I also put a short video on YouTube showing the Glade and Middle Ride. I began by cutting up the branches, and dragging them to the sides of the Glade to form a perimeter. This got them out of the way, but should also protect the surrounding undergrowth and thickets from being trampled. To provide a sharp boundary, I then cut the trunks up into three foot sections and rolled them to the edge.

With this all done, by the end of the year I had an area of 1000 square metres cleared. I made another video for YouTube showing a 360 degree view from the centre of the Glade.

Bridgewood Middle Ride

In the first year, I've been establishing woodland tracks called "rides" which are wide enough to be open to the sky. In the past, a ride was a track open enough to be ridden on horseback, but now they're good forestry practice as they let sunlight in to dry them out, can be grassed over, and their edges promote wildlife. The Middle Ride is the longest, running from the entrance diagonally to the north east corner, and it's the one that's received the most attention since it passes through the Glade at centre of the wood.

These pictures show what the route of the Middle Ride was like not long after it was marked out. In the left hand picture you can see two of the green-topped marker canes used to lay the route out. In both pictures, some of the shrubs blocking the way have already been cut down to ground level, and you can see where the undergrowth is starting to be trodden down.

To be properly open even when the trees are in leaf requires cutting trees and shrubs back themselves, as shown in the left hand picture, where hazel trees have been cut down to let in more light. You can also see a short YouTube video of the Glade and south east Middle Ride, which shows this stretch near completion. Before this point though, some of the stretches could be cleared at ground level by raking out the undergrowth, such as the part of the ride to the north east of the Glade shown in the right hand picture.

Widening the ride also requires cutting down full size trees ("standards") in some places, and the picture shows one immediately after felling. I made a video for YouTube of this tree coming down.

Edited Tue 6 Apr 10, 11:13 PM by Tanos