Monthly Archives: June 2019

One of the special places in Adel Woods is a meadow near the cricket pitches.

The meadow had escaped the notice of Steve Joul and the Friends of Adel Woods until our treasurer, Judith, drew it to our attention about five years ago. At that time it had a magnificent showing of common spotted orchids and other meadow flowers, but it was in danger of being taken over by trees, bracken and himalayan balsam.

Since then we have carried a lot of work to preserve the meadow and last September Steve and one of his volunteers spent a Saturday mowing the meadow (which is how a meadow should be managed) – see our blog entry for 1 September 2018

Your correspondent is pleased to say that all the hard work has paid off and when he visited the meadow today he found the meadow looking wonderful.

Common spotted orchids: Adel Woods on 30 June 2019

Today we were litter picking and continuing with our mission to clear saplings and bracken from Adel Moor.

It was a fine day and we had a good turn out. Apart from that, your correspondent cannot remember much about it as it was six week ago.

However, one thing that was particularly memorable was that one or two dog owners are allowing their dog to perform its business on the main path traversing the moor and not bothering to pick it up. There were lots of particularly large deposits all along the path and one of our members, a dog owner, volunteered to collect it all up. It took some time.

Your correspondent feels nauseous just thinking about it.

In addition, one of the rangers has advised your correspondent that when he was recently working on the moor he found a number of black doggie doo doo bags thrown into the heather.

Apart from the sheer unpleasantness of having dog faeces all over the place, it also seriously damages the habitat.

Apart from that, it was really good morning: we cleared a lot of bracken and saplings from the moor, and it was looking particularly fine today.