Another lovely Summer day and another great turn out for Friends of Adel Woods.
Today, there were two programmed tasks: litterpicking and working on Adel Bog. Three of us chose litterpicking and six of us chose to work on Adel Bog – more below.
A tenth Friend, Judith, chose to clean up the Slabbering Baby.
And she made a great job of it!
Litterpicking
Starting from Buckstone Road, the litterpickers set off up the track by the cricket grounds and then along Crag Lane to the Village Green, each picking up two bags of rubbish. They also found a charity bag containing hundreds of unused charity bags for Breast Cancer Research UK which someone had obviously dumped. This is the second time this has happened – the first time, some years ago, we found six heavy bags of unused charity bags for the charity Coping With Cancer hidden deep in impenetrable undergrowth near Adel Bog – a good five minutes walk from the nearest vehicle access.
Adel Bog
While all this was going on, six of us spent the morning working on Adel Bog, our task this morning being to clear saplings, bracken and brambles.
In carrying out this task we were helped considerably by the loan of two tree poppers from the Council.
The tree poppers make light work of removing small saplings and enabled us to clear far more than we would have been able to remove using mattocks or spades.
They are basically a lever with a jaw at the foot which grasps the trunk of a sapling. You can then lever the sapling out of the ground in a matter of seconds in the case of a small sapling. With larger saplings with extensive roots it might take a few minutes, but still a very quick job.
Adel Bog is a beautiful little habitat which is home to rushes, purple moor grass, heath spotted orchids, cotton grass, bog asphodel, tormentil, devil’s bit scabious, and yellow iris. Often when we work there, there are lots of butterflies. It is a lovely place to be.
Unfortunately, it is a constant battle to conserve the bog against the invasion of brambles, bracken and trees. That invasion has moved the top boundary of the bog inwards by about six metres – as can be seen in the photograph below. A map from about a hundred years ago shows that the bog stretched all the way to Adel Pond at that time!
Today, in view of this Summer’s drought, it cannot be said that the bog was boggy. However, the vegetation was surprisingly green and this habitat is definitely worth preserving.
Friends of Adel Woods 