Archive for the :: Forest News Category

It may be frozen and gloomy but you can’t cower inside until until May; can you?

What might lift the spirits and get the blood pumping is to come to the Country Park for a walk. We have a fantastic network of paths including 5 miles of surfaced trails for cycling if you’re feeling really active. From a long hike to the shortest stroll the Millennium Country Park offers wonderful views and a variety of meadows, woods and water. At the end of a walk the Lakeside Cafe is the place for a cake, hot soup and coffee.

If you’d like to join others, why not come to one of our guided walks? This weekend there are two.

Feathers in the freezer – a bird walk

The Bird walk   will happen on Saturday 4 February 2012, 8am – 11am and costs £3/adult, £2/child. £1 reduction for Volunteers and Friends.  Life’s tough at this time of year and there’s always a chance of rarities in the Country Park. Our volunteer leaders are the people to tell you what you are looking at or listening to.

No experience of birdwatching is necessary because leaders know everything necessary to introduce you to the wonderful world of birding.  Bring binoculars if you have them although these are not essential as there are usually some spares and often the chance to look down telescopes.

Wrap up warm- birders often spend ages rooted to the spot waiting for something to happen! There are some rough paths and short lengths of gradient over 1:6. Please book in advance but pay the leader on the day. Call 01234 767037 to book a place.

Sunday Stroll, a Gentle Sunday Walk 

5 February at 10.30am
Come and join us in the Country Park for a gentle walk to hear how the Park was set up and a little about the surrounding area.

The walk will keep to hard surfaced tracks in the Park which are mostly level but have short sections of gradient up to 1:9.

Call 01234 767037 for more details.
Cost £1, payable on the day – no need to book. Meet at reception. Walks last approximately 2 hours.                              

Why not finish the morning off with lunch in our Forest Centre Restaurant? Call 01234 767037 for details.

The video was taken on 4 January 2012. The first of the two divers appeared on the lake on 9 December 2011, a second was seen briefly on 24 December, and two have been present continuously since 3 January 2012.

Great northern divers are now the most regularly seen of the divers in Bedfordshire with a few being present in the county during most of the recent winter periods. These birds breed in Canada, the northern part of the US, Alaska, Greenland, Iceland and very occasionally in Scotland. In the British Isles great northern divers are mainly winter visitors and most are found on the coast, with a probably increasing number wintering inland on large lakes.

Martin Green (Volunteer)

 Sunday 12 February, 2012, 11am – 3pm

We are very pleased to be able to invite you to plant a tree at Octagon Wood, near Willington. After a hugely successful planting day at Top Farm near Lidlington in early December, we will move north to the edge of Bedford in February and we hope you will be able to join us. 

Owned by Bedford Borough Council, the first part of Octagon Wood was planted a year ago and it will be great to get back to finish things off. As the Wood lies astride Route 51 of the National Cycle Network, at the heart of Bedford River Valley Park, the new planting, which once again will be run in partnership with Bedford Borough Council, will add an extra experience to the ride from Milton Keynes to Sandy or for the less ambitious, it’s very easily accessible by bicycle from Priory Country Park click for map If you can ride from Priory on 12 February, why not give it a try? 

Naming the wood

Last February, we ran a competition to name the wood and the two winners who both suggested the name Octagon Wood will, we hope, be able to come back and join Mayor of Bedford, Dave Hodgson, to officially name it. The ceremony will take place at midday – don’t miss it.

Can’t ride or walk? Catch a free bus

Please don’t drive to the site – there’s no parking. A free bus service will run to the planting site from:

• the Forest Centre at Marston Moretaine (departing every half hour between 10.30 and 14.00) ,
• Elstow Park & Ride (every half hour between 10.45 and 14.15). Click for location map

The last bus will leave the planting site at 15.15

Why not sign up to receive email updates by typing your address into the box to the right of this screen.

Watch out for Cupid’s arrows

Timed to co-incide with St Valentine’s Day, our February planting event is an ideal opportunity to show your environmental class to the love of your life. Why not adopt a tree for that significant other in your life? Or perhaps, if you are both feeling hardy and are prepared to wrap up warm, you might come to the event together. It might be cold and wet, but it could be beautifully romantic and a real day to remember. Read more about adopting trees in the Forest.

All comforts on site (possibly)

We can’t promise it will be warm, sunny and dry, in fact it will probably be cold, grey and wet, so please wear something warm. We can promise, however, that there will be free tea, coffee and biscuits for all and there will be bacon rolls and soup on sale to warm you up a little. We always have  a loo on site too.

Ride with a guide

We are very keen to encourage people to come to the planting day under their own steam, so there’s going to be a ‘ride-in’ from Priory Country Park Visitor Centre.

Why not bring your bicycle to Priory and join our guide at 10.45am who will lead you at a steady pace along the surfaced, flat and well signed National Cycle Network Route 51; a distance of  just over 1 mile. Riding in a group’s fun and you won’t get lost!

Of course it’s a lovely walk too!

For more information about the day call 01234 762608 or email 

                    

It’s taken longer than I’d planned but we now have some stills on our Facebook page showing some scenes from the public tree planting on Sunday 4 December; what a great day it was.

I also took a couple of minutes of video of the day. Oh for a decent cameraman, but I have to make do with me so this is as good as it’s likely to get.

Past, present and future Managing Directors of the Marston Vale Trust joined numerous others, including many past-employees, last Wednesday 14 December, to celebrate twenty years of the creation of the Forest of Marston Vale.

The evening started with  the welcome return of Judith Feline. Judith guided the creation of the Marston Vale Trust and the staff team’s departure from the relative comfort of Beds County Council’s employ. Those were often difficult times through which, in addition, Judith guided the Forest Centre and Millennium Country Park’s construction. For those with memories long enough, John Craven and Bob the Builder might sound a familiar note.

Members of the current Forest Staff Team spoke briefly about their experiences of working for the organisation and formalities concluded with presentations of an inscribed spade to departing Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Tony Talbot; and a carved ash bowl to departing Chair of Trustees, Mrs Fiona Chapman, MBE, DL. Mrs Chapman will stay on as Chairman until the end of March 2012 whilst Nick Webb, new Chief Executive gets himself established.

It was very good to see so many old faces and to enjoy the generally very positive vibe of the evening. Thanks for coming.

Here’s to the next twenty years.

Nick Webb has been appointed the next Chief Executive of Marston Vale Trust and Managing Director of our operating company (Marston Vale Services Ltd). He will be taking up his new appointment on 1 January 2012.

Nick has outstanding experience in both the commercial and charity sectors – he has started up his own company which he grew and ran for ten years before its sale, by which time it was achieving a £2.4m annual turnover.  In 2008 Nick set up a new charity working with young people (Pro-Action Hertfordshire). This now employs nine full-time staff and seven part time staff and has a turnover of just under a £1M.  Nick is particularly excited by our social enterprise approach as a means of creating the Forest of Marston Vale.

 Nick and his wife, together with their three children, live in Redbourn.

After weeks of planning, much discussion and a large wedge of cash courtesy of GE Transportation and Network Rail, it’s very good to reflect on a brilliant day of tree planting at the Forest’s newest Community Woodland, near Lidlington, last Sunday. More than 3,000 trees were planted by over three hundred enthusiastic people, who turned out - to make a difference, do something worthwhile, enjoy the extremely bracing wind and a fabulous view, and eat an excellent bacon roll.

People came from near (lots from Lidlington) and far (Leicestershire, Oxford) and there were smiles all round – the ground was soft enough for easy digging but not muddy, the sun shone occasionally and it didn’t rain and there was only the shortest break in the bacon roll supply around 2pm; thanks to Sue and Pete who didn’t get a break from the griddle all day.

To all those who came and planted some trees a huge thank you. Although I generally experience a sense of “here we go again” your enthusiasm always makes these days very enjoyable.

The Top Farm site will be busy all week, Thomas Johnson Lower School’s Years 3 & 4 planted 140 trees yesterday, Timberland UK were there too. On Thursday around 100 employees of Home Retail Group’s Marketing Department will join us to wrap up the week and, hopefully get quite  a few hundred more trees in the ground.

If all that appeals and you’re wondering if there’s another chance to have a bash, you’re in luck. Please join us on Sunday 12 February 2012 to finish the second half of Octagon Wood, near Willington. We will post all the information you need here once things are finalised, but if you want us to let you know direct, type your email address into the box to the right of your screen and press subscribe – we will do the rest.

A gallery of pictures on our Facebook page.

It’s that time of year again and in response to the summons for volunteers from Ranger Sven at the Forest Centre, on Saturday 19th November a largish number of us gathered at the Centre on what turned out to be a beautiful autumn day, eagerly awaiting the day’s ‘hedging’ activities – nothing to do with financial markets! For some new members it was their first time ever, for others of us (so called old hands) it was our first hedging session of the season.

As we trudged along in small groups to the work location, maybe some (like me) were trying to recall the techniques picked up last year and realising that the old brain is just not what it used to be. No need to worry though, on reaching the location alongside Station Road, Ranger Sven (mine of information that he is) gave a very interesting overview of hedge laying, why it is done and how, together with a potted history of the art, the tools used and of course the safe use of the same. The regulars at the Forest Marston Centre (Volunteer Assistant Rangers) have been very busy sharpening and re-furbishing the necessary tools to ensure they are in tip top condition for the task – therefore it’s vital that everyone is aware of the damage that can be done in careless hands.

Apparently the hedge alongside Station Road, on the boundary of the Millennium Country Park, is pretty ancient (a few hundred years) so is worth looking after. We were all keen to get stuck in and in a few hours the tangle of hedge, for about 50 metres length, had been cut back, old dead material removed (piles of it) and we could see the wood for the trees so to speak. During the work, ace Volunteer photographer Don appeared with his Nikon camera and took several posed and candid shots of us working, or not, as the case may be. Over the years Don has taken some wonderful photographs of the wildlife at Marston including people working on the various projects so there is an excellent record of events, flora and fauna.

After lunch, it was apparent we could actually get down to some real hedge laying – the moment of truth as it were. Sven gave a demonstration of how it’s done and made it look easy (he always does), then it was our turn. He split us into teams of 4 or 5 – new people with the ‘old hands’ and we were allocated a section of hedge to tackle. Definitely, this work is harder than it looks requiring some skill with use of the tools, so you have to apply yourself to the job in hand and know when to take a breather. That said, it is most satisfying to step back after several large branches or stems have been laid and see how much neater it looks – and this is before the top binding has been done. It starts you thinking about how the other branches will lay, the most suitable ones to keep and which ones to discard – it requires quite a bit of thought and frequent advice from Sven.

All too soon the day is at an end and it’s time to pack up, return to the Forest Centre, unload, clean & lubricate the tools ready for next time – these outdoor activities are the stuff of real teamwork.

Next opportunity to do some conservation work in the Country Park is on Sunday 11 December. Read more…

Nigel (Forest Volunteer)

Don Morris, Volunteer Park Warden, has been at it again and this time it’s more exciting than usual. Armed with a remotely triggered infra-red camera, he’s been trying to catch an image of the otter that we know has been frequenting the Park. We know he or she is around because volunteers are out regularly watching for ’spraint’ (poo to you and me); and often find some.

For some weeks Don’s efforts have produced a small collection of interesting but slightly frustrating images – a fox, woodmouse, a spider and a even slug all feature. But now he has struck lucky.

Don recently appeared in the office looking decidedly pleased and showed us a couple of images. Although slightly blurred in black and white, there is no doubt that the animal pictured is an otter. Don reckons there may be a pair in the Park, which bodes well. The area is well provided for water – there are plenty of lakes, large and small; and the Elstow Brook connects the Great Ouse with the heart of the Vale, so there is a simple route into the area.
We are keeping our fingers crossed and would like to thank Don for these exciting images.

Common Buzzard mobbed by a Kestrel – MVCP 19th Nov 2011 from Martin Green on Vimeo.

Life’s hard; even at the top of the food chain things can be as stressful as for more lowly organisms. Here’s a wonderful sequence taken by Country Park regular and spectacular photographer, Martin Green, showing a buzzard staying calm in the face of some harassment, apparently by a kestrel, although it all happens too fast to see it. Fortunately, Martin’s camera picked up comments in the background.

I sometimes find myself feeling sorry for kestrels as they receive pretty constant hassle from crows and jackdaws. It seems they can give as good they get.

Thanks to Martin for sharing this with us. Martin is one of a team of amazingly well-informed bird walk leaders who are keen to share their knowledge about the birds in the Millennium Country Park. Visit this page regularly for updates or take a look at our events listing for dates through to next spring. Next walk is on 27 December.