This morning we woke to a clear blue sky and the first frost of the season. A perfect day for working in Adel Woods!
We had a good turn out, and while Sue and Steph went off litterpicking, seven of us helped Steve Joul clear saplings and brambles from Adel Bog.
It was the first time we had worked on Adel Bog since September 2019 and the first time that we have worked there so late in the year – we normally work there in the late Summer or early Autumn when there are still flowers in bloom and butterflies on the wing.
Adel Bog is a lovely spot. It is certainly one of my favourite “work parties”, and today we were blessed with beautiful weather.
The bog is a unique habitat in Adel Woods and we are trying to preserve it from turning into woodland – which could well have happened in the last ten years. Maps show that a hundred years ago the bog was much larger. The bog is also quite dry due to the surrounding trees and the invading saplings and brambles. Because we have not been able to work on the bog for a couple of years, there was a lot to do!
Friends of Adel Woods working on Adel Bog, 21st November 2021
Today we focused on the western end of the bog, half of us concentrating on brambles and half of us focusing on saplings.
We were considerably assisted in removing the saplings by the use of three tree poppers. These are amazing tools which combine a gripping jaw with a lever and which enabled us to remove each sapling a lot faster than when using a mattock or spade. The result was that we were able to clear a great many saplings at the western end and on the northern side of the bog.
Of course there was still time to enjoy some of the wonders of nature…
A beautiful Oysterling Mushroom – upper side on the left, and viewed from below on the right. Adel Bog 21 November 2021A young oak tree covered in galls: Adel Bog, 21 November 2021
We finished work at quarter past twelve, having achieved a tremendous amount. It is clear that with the use of tree poppers next time, we will be able to clear the remaining saplings when we work on the bog next year.
In case you are wondering, Steph and Sue had a successful morning, picking up four bags of litter around the village green and on Crag Lane.
Happy Friends of Adel Woods! 21 November 2021. Three tree poppers visible in the middle
Friends of Adel Woods in Stairfoot Lane Carpark: glad to be back!
Our first Friends of Adel Woods event since 13th December, and the first after so-called Freedom Day (July 19th), when most of the covid 19 restrictions were removed.
Would anyone turn up? There was no need to worry: eleven of us came, full of enthusiasm, to help Steve Joul with a range of tasks in the woods. Even better, the forecast thunderstorms did not arrive, and it was a beautiful day.
Four of us set off to pick up litter – and picked up lots of broken glass around Adel Crag before dispersing to pick up litter around the picnic area and in the beech wood.
Repairing the steps from Stairfoot Lane carpark down to Adel Beck
The rest of us set off to the steps down from the carpark to Adel Beck to repair a couple of the steps and to clear mud from the rest of them. We last did this eighteen months ago in January 2020 (Oh, those innocent days before covid!) and in parts they were turning into a muddy bank – caused in part by the activity of some very energetic moles!
As we worked on the steps, the two Davids went to remove a tree which had fallen across the path along the side of the stream. Having sawn the trunk into three, they then got a passerby to move the trunk for them!
The path by the Adel Beck, Adel Woods
Having cleared the tree, the two Davids set about creating some drainage channels to stop the path turning into a quagmire whenever it rains.
Meanwhile, back at the steps, some of us were still removing mud and repairing the second step, while Steve and Roderic had moved to Crag Lane to clear a drainage pipe near the picnic area.
The orchid meadow is looking great again this Summer. It was “discovered” by Judith about eight years ago, when the meadow was in danger of disappearing under invasive trees, brambles and Himalayan Balsam. Since then Steve Joul has led Friends of Adel Woods and his own team of volunteers in looking after the meadow and the work has really paid off. For more information about the work have a look at this blog entry.
Common spotted orchid and buttercup in the orchid meadow, Adel Woods: 10th July 2021.
Coincidentally, Steve Joul went to have a look at the meadow the following day and took this magnificent photo of a black and yellow longhorn beetle (rutpela maculata).
Black and yellow longhorn beetle on common spotted orchid, the orchid meadow, Adel woods: 11th July 2021
I cannot compete! here is a photo of a selfheal flower and a couple of photos the orchids which I took.
We held our Annual General Meeting this evening by Zoom. All the current committee members stood for re-election and were duly appointed.
Roger Gilbert was appointed chair, Judith White treasurer and Stephanie Clarke was appointed secretary. Rob Hall agreed to check the annual accounts.
The constitution provides for a committee of 10 members. Currently, we have six committee members, so we are keen for new volunteers to join the committee. If you are interested in joining the committee and having an input into the work done by Friends of Adel Woods please put yourself forward – you can do this by contacting Roger Gilbert by posting a comment on this website. The duties of the committee are not onerous. In a normal year we have about four meetings when we decide on our program of work, discuss and approve fund raising and expenditure, and deal with the matters which arise from time to time.
The Chair’s review of activities from May 2019 to May 2020
Our last AGM was on the 9th May 2019. We couldn’t have an AGM in person in May 2020 due to Covid 19 restrictions and it has been put off until today. So we have two years to review.
May 2019 to May 2020
From May 2019 to May 2020 we carried out the following:
eight litterpicking mornings
three mornings working on Adel Moor
two mornings working on Adel Bog
four mornings of path clearing including repairing the Stairfoot Lane steps
one morning clearing mud and debris from Adel Pond
one morning working in the hospice woodland
two days of nest box cleaning and surveying with S Joul
one day when David S and I replaced a missing nest box by the bridge below the pond – this particular location being a popular one for nuthatches to nest in.
In addition Steve Joul let a very successful Fungal Foray in October.
We also had a stall on the village green in August when Kibitz played.
In addition it is worth saying that 2019 was our tenth anniversary year and we celebrated this with a meal at the Olive Branch attended by 58 people, and the sale of a FOAW 2020 calendar which sold 50 copies.
The Friends of Adel Woods 2020 Calendar
Our last event in this year was the path clearing in March 2020. However, we had a great discovery when Lisa and Andy Worrilow found a colony of green hairstreak butterflies on Adel Moor – hitherto the only colony in the Leeds area was on Otley Chevin.
May 2020 to May 2021
Our activities were severely curtailed from March 2020 due to the Covid 19 lockdown.
We were not able to have our AGM or our annual birdsong walk in May 2020. We did, however, manage to have some events from May 2020 to today.
In September we spent a day raking mowings from the Orchid Meadow after Steve and a volunteer, Jim, mowed it. We also had a morning in December when we extended the northern boundary of the meadow. I should say that the Orchid Meadow has been a great success after all the work which FOAW and Steve have done on it. See the pictures on the blog for June 2020.
In October we had a morning of dredging Adel Pond, working on the ditches draining into the pond, and Judith cleaned out the Slabbering Baby.
We also had a day in the Autumn path clearing, but I don’t seem to have put a blog entry or have any photos!
Other notable events are the installation of the new interpretation boards – Adel Moor, Alwoodley Crag, and Buckstone Road entrance and the planting of a new orchard in the practice rugby field.
The Interpretation boards: in June, David Preston helped some of us choose sites to place them. In September, we helped Steve Joul clear the sites and mark them. In March David and his colleagues installed them for us – and they look wonderful.
David Preston putting the finishing touches to one of the new interpretation panels in Adel Woods
Steve has planted ten fruit trees – eight apple and two conference pear trees – in what used to be the practice rugby ground to the north west of Old Leo’s clubhouse..
Oh, and I should say that the Green Hairstreaks were seen on Adel Moor in April, but we are concerned that they may not have been able to breed before the rather wet weather we have had in the last month.
Apart from that, I have put some entries in the blog about ring necked parakeets in Leeds and murmurations of starlings, badgers and yellow hammers
One thing is clear is that Adel Woods has been a very popular recreational spot during the lockdowns – as evidenced by the large number of extra paths that have appeared for the first time in the last year.
Steve Joul spent today planting ten sapling fruit trees in the disused rugby field to the north of Crag Lane. If you can’t see them very clearly in the photograph, it is because they are only about a metre and a half in height and they are planted well apart so that they have space to develop fully.
The location of the new “orchard”.
The fruit trees are as follows:
two Cox’s Orange Pippin apple trees
four James Grieve apple trees
one Belle Boskoop apple tree
one Egremont Russet apple tree
two Conference pear trees.
They are grafted onto M25 root stock which means that they needed to be planted eight metres apart as, with tender loving care, they have the potential to grow into magnificent trees. The tender loving care will involve ensuring that they get adequate water during the Summer until their root systems have recovered from being uprooted and replanted.
The planting of the trees is part of Leeds City Council’s Woodland Creation Scheme. In 2019 the Council declared a climate emergency and set a target to become carbon neutral by 2030, part of which is to be achieved by the planting of trees.
The Council is also a member of the White Rose Forest, a community forest for North and West Yorkshire. The White Forest strategy for Leeds has set a target of increasing tree cover from 17% to 33% by 2050 and is intended to ensure that no household in Leeds is further than 500 metres from wooded spaces.
These ambitious plans involve planting 5.8 million trees on Leeds City Council land by 2045. Each year from 2020 to 2045, fifty hectares of parks and green spaces will be identified and planted up with 4,500 saplings per hectare, a planting target of 225,000 trees each year, to create an additional 1,250 hectares of new woodland per year throughout the city on Council owned land.
The benefits of planting trees are many:
they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide oxygen – crucial in reducing the effects of greenhouse gas emissions
they act as air filters, capturing harmful pollutants by trapping them on their leaves and bark
trees and woodlands are important habitats for wildlife
mature trees provide shade and reduce urban temperatures
trees prevent flooding by keeping soil in place and soaking up water
Woodlands provide a place to connect with nature, helping people to relax and unwind, which benefits both mental and physical health
The planting of fruit trees in Adel Woods was at the request of one of our local councillors. Here is a little more information about each of the tree species – obtained from https://www.orangepippintrees.co.uk (save for Belle de Boskoop) :
Cox’s Orange Pippins
Considered by many to be the finest of all apples, primarily a variety for eating fresh, but also excellent for juice, cider and baking.
James Grieve
Raised in Scotland at the end of the 19th century, this is a mid-season variety which is picked in early-mid September. It is a very juicy apple grown for eating and cooking. It is an excellent pollinator for many other apple varieties.
Belle de Boskoop (information from Wikipedia)
This is an apple cultivar which originated in Boskoop, Netherlands, where it began as a chance seedling in 1856. It is firm, tart and fragrant and can contain more than four times the vitamin C of Granny Smiths or Golden Delicious.
Egremont Russet
A classic English russet apple from the Victorian era, popular with discerning apple lovers who appreciate its unique flavour and appearance. It works well in savoury salads and is good for juicing.
Conference Pear
The most widely-grown pear variety in the UK. It crops heavily and reliably and has an excellent flavour.
If your mouth is now watering, have a look at the orange pippin trees website.
Installing the interpretation panel by the side of the path down to the Slabbering Baby
As part of the Wilderness on Your Doorstep project in the Meanwood Valley, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Adel Woods was allocated three interpretation panels to be sited by the path into the woods from Buckstone Road, on Adel Moor and on Crag Lane near Adel Crag.
After a long delay due to covid 19, they have at last been installed by David Preston and Louise and Emma of the Parks and Countryside ranger team.
On Tuesday, 2nd March, they installed the panel on the path from Buckstone Road(see pictures above) and the panel on Adel Moor (see pictures below).
Installing the interpretation panel on Adel Moor.
They installed the final panel on Crag Lane on Wednesday 3rd March.
The interpretation panel on Crag Lane, near Adel Crag.
They look great! So thank you to everyone involved in applying for the grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, to Dan Malster who organised the design of the panels, to Steve Joul who assisted in clearing the locations for them, and to David, Louise and Emma who installed them – and of course to everyone else who played a part in the long journey from imagining their existence to their installation.
I should say that the lottery funding also covered the cost of installing an interpretation board at Adel Whin on Eccup Lane. Adel Whin isn’t part of the area looked after by FOAW but here is a picture of David installing the panel.
At the end of February, Leeds City Council started work to improve the path in the area of the Slabbering Baby. There has been a longstanding problem because a large amount of the spring water from the moor no longer flows into the Slabbering Baby but emerges about 10 metres away – onto the path leading up to Buckstone Road. The result is that the path and the Meanwood Valley Trail have frequently been covered in very deep mud.
Over the years, FOAW and Steve Joul and his volunteer team have tried to improve the area by scraping off mud, adding hardcore and doing our best to create a channel across the Meanwood Valley Trail so that water can flow away into the undergrowth on the lower side of the trail. However, it has been difficult because the path surface below the mud is very hard – and the mud returns very quickly!
At the instigation of Cllr Buckley, the Parks and Countryside Department investigated the cause of the problem and have laid new drainage pipes to take the surface water away. The area is already looking a lot better.
The area of brown earth shows where new pipes have been laid to take away the surface water.
With the country anxious about covid 19, and the threat of further lockdown restrictions being imposed in Leeds as from tomorrow, it was unclear how many Friends would take part in today’s event.
In the event, four of us met up with Steve Joul in Buckstone Road at 10 am, on quite a pleasant morning.
Judith, our intrepid treasurer, had set her heart on cleaning out the bowl of the Slabbering Baby which was full of stones and rather unpleasant mud.
The rest of us made our way to Mill Fall Pond, or Adel Pond as it is also known.
The pond was constructed many years ago to provide water for a Flax Mill which used to operate from this site. Steve Joul and volunteers rescued it from becoming dry land about twenty five years ago and each year Friends of Adel Woods spend a morning in October clearing out the stones and logs – which seem to be thrown into the pond by passersby throughout the year – and the silt which has been washed into the pond by the ditches which feed it.
Steve and your correspondent got togged up in waders and made our way cautiously into the pond – cautiously, because you don’t want to trip on an underwater obstacle, step into a deep chasm or disturb the monsters of the deep!
Adel Pond
As usual we found plenty of very large logs and stones and removed them before embarking on the task of removing buckets of silt. Usually we have quite a large team, but today we started with two of us in the pond filling the buckets and two of us transporting the buckets of mud away for tipping down the nearby bank.
Before and after: if viewing online, move the slider to see the before and after images.
After about an hour, David set off to clear one of the ditches feeding the pond. Last year we cleared the ditch and inserted a pipe under the bridge leading down from the Meanwood Valley Trail but we were surprised to find a fortnight ago that the pipe was no longer visible as mud now covered it and completely blocked the space under the bridge. David came armed with his drainage rods as well as a couple of spades specifically to rectify the situation.
A view down the Meanwood Valley Trail towards Adel Pond
An hour’s hard work and the ditch was as good as new!
Adel Pond
We finished work at about 12.20 and all that remained was to clean the waders and tools in Nanny Beck before returning home for a well-earned Sunday lunch!
FOAW’s return to active service seemed in jeopardy when Leeds was put on lockdown on Friday due to rapidly increasing Covid-19 infections. It looked as if today’s event would have to be postponed. However, there rules make an exception for voluntary activities and a message was received yesterday morning that we could go ahead.
We met at the Slabbering Baby entrance to the woods on Buckstone Road at 10 am and we had a brilliant turn out of six – in addition to Steve Joul. The weather was chilly, but it was a pleasant day.
We had three tasks this morning: litterpicking, clearing spaces for our new interpretation panels and general path clearing. Unusually, none of our volunteers opted for litterpicking and so we all set off to our first task: clearing a space for the interpretation panel on the path down to the Slabbering Baby. Of course, we took a couple of litterpickers and bags with us and collected rubbish on our way.
The interpretation panels are a final stage of the Meanwood Valley Project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund: see our blog post for 11 June 2020.
On the way down to the location of this panel we saw that the Alder trees and the nettles by the path had very many blue beetles on them. Steve was of the view that they were alder leaf beetles in view of their location. However, it is only possible to identify some beetles accurately under magnification.
Clearing the space for the interpretation panel was a bigger job than anticipated and entailed cutting back holly, removing a number of small trees to lighten the location up, and marking the site for the panel with non-toxic spray. Unfortunately, when Steve shook the spray can, the orange paint started to shoot out of a puncture in the side, giving Steve some very stylish and modern flashes to his trousers!
Before and after – click to compare!
From there we made our way up to the moor to clear and mark the space for our interpretation panel there. This was a much easier task, merely requiring the removal of brambles, and marking the location with another can of spray paint which Steve had fortunately brought with him. As the gentlemen volunteers helped Steve with this, the lady volunteers set off to clear holly and brambles from one of the paths down from the moor to the Slabbering Baby.
The proposed site of the interpretation panel on Adel Moor
The path in question was one FOAW cleared a few years ago but it had become very overgrown. We spent about 30 minutes cutting back brambles and removing saplings.
Path clearing. Click on the photos to compare before and after
By the time we had completed this task it was 11.40 and Jude and Steph set off home. The remaining five set off up the Meanwood Valley Trail to Adel Crag, the site of the final interpretation panel. Fortunately, this required no more than agreeing the location and spraying it with paint.
The location of the interpretation panel for Adel Crag
Once we had completed this, we all set off home. On our way back to Buckstone Road, we unblocked the drainage pipe we put in Crag Lane in and had a look at the patch of Japanese knotweed which we have been trying to eradicate over the last 10 years. We found two or three shoots, but, fortunately, this is only a tiny fraction of the colony that was there a few years ago.
Cleared drainage pipe, Crag Lane, Adel Woods: 27 September 2020
Common spotted orchids in Adel Woods: 24 June 2020
One of the loveliest spots in Adel Woods in the Summer is the orchid meadow which has a wonderful display of wild flowers – and in particular of common spotted orchids.
Four years ago, the meadow was in danger of disappearing under encroaching trees, bracken and himalayan balsam. However, after careful work by Friends of Adel Woods and Steve Joul and other volunteers, the meadow is looking fantastic.
In September 2018, Steve and a volunteer spent a day mowing the meadow with a mechanical mower and this made a fantastic difference. Today they spent the day mowing the meadow again.
Jim mowing the orchid meadow: Adel Woods 2 September 2020
Steve also found this fine specimen of an artichoke gall on a pedunculate oak.
Artichoke gall on a pedunculate oak: the orchid meadow, Adel Woods – 2 September 2020
Friends of Adel Woods 