KWAG hasn’t often got involved in litter collection across the estate as we know there are locals and walkers who often do this, and the Probation service continue to carry out community service collections. However, one area has been a persistent pain: the layby on Penpole Lane. This regularly gets fly-tipped and the Council have recently erected a timber fence to try and inhibit illegal dumping. This, unfortunately, hasn’t worked, and one of last month’s working party aims was to clear the old quarry areas of rubbish.

We found it in a poor state, with binbags, and loose waste strewn about as well as the ubiquitous used mattress! We had a great turnout for the event, so good that it only took just a couple of hours to bag-up everything and leave it for collection in the layby. Unfortunately, just a fortnight later, more flytipping had been dumped in the same area. This has also been cleared away and we aim to keep monitoring the area.
 
Thank you to everyone who came out to and contributed to one of our best ever attended sessions, especially the new faces who came to join working party efforts.

…and some tree trimming 

The second target for volunteers on our Working Party was a scrubby area alongside Penpole Lane, not far from the litter collection. Since the 1960s this area, once grassland, had been colonised by ash and sycamore. Most is in a poor condition, being multi-stemmed, damaged by cutting in the early years of their growth. Having persevered through many probable attempts to keep on top of them they have grown into a thicket along the roadside.

Our plans were to undertake “natural spacing” or “haloing” to thin out this area, cutting out the weedier and less healthy saplings to allow the better specimens to thrive. This has the secondary advantage of opening up glimpsed views from the main path along Penpole Point to the hills of Somerset to the west. From an historical perspective, these were once greatly admired by visitors to the estate.
 
Working carefully, warry of bird nesting season, we threaded through the copse gradually felling small saplings and raising the crown to allow sunlight in. Whilst the impact of the work might not be immediately obvious, it has helped open the area up and should prevent the further encroachment of scrub onto the remaining meadowland.