Forest Volunteers take a break from the bashing (image Don Morris)

I’ve done a lot of scrub bashing in my life (really a lot) and it’s usually quite fun as long as the duration of each episode is limited. One can have too much of a good thing and clearing dangerously prickly hawthorn bushes for days on end in bitter cold and often wet conditions is far from my idea of a good time. Last Sunday’s bash was however, the best ever.

For one thing the weather was fantastic; about as beautiful a January day as I’ve ever experienced. Sharply cold and as clear as a well crafted blog post. Somewhere in the region of twenty five Forest Volunteers showed up at the Forest Centre to spend the morning clearing hawthorn from part of the Callow Mounds. And there was the second good thing – a morning scrub bashing. About long enough to work up an appetite and feel like you’ve earned a sit down, but not so much that your hawthorn hatred gets out of control. Followed by a lazy Sunday afternoon doing not ever so much.

This was our more or less annual Volunteer task and lunch at which the Marston Vale Trust is pleased to offer a small token to say a sincere thank you to the legion of people who help us out doing all sorts of things through the year. The token was lunch and everyone enjoyed it thoroughly.

I had a previous lunch appointment so missed the food, so I will use this opportunity to say thank you to all the Forest Volunteers who make the Forest happen. Without you all we would be unable to make such huge progress each year.

And another thing that made it for me was Anna’s scallops (or were these scollops?) Usually on these occasions one is presented with an area of bushes and asked to cut down bushes. Here we were asked to create scallops, gorgeous curves breaking into the depths of the tangled thorn which can only become beautiful refugia for our butterflies come the spring. Thinking while scrub bashing was a revelation – brilliant!

Guy Lambourne