Earth day walk.

We’ve had a surprisingly nice walk this afternoon. Surprising because it was wet and grey this morning so we waited until after our bacon buttie lunch before setting off.

Our walk was to the St Ives estate to see how the tree felling had ‘progressed’ since our last walk on the 1st April, especially after seeing Wilsden Walker’s blip earlier in the week.

They have made some temporary bridges across the deeply rutted mud created by the machinery so we walked across one from the bridle path and up past Lady Blantyre's rock. It was soon obvious that there had been extensive felling to the right and below the path. 

There was a sign saying ‘Path Closed’ but, rather naughtily, we made our way across to the wall seen on the right of the blip. This lovely curving stone wall used to be the upper edge of a rather secluded path hemmed in by woodland. You can see what’s happened to the trees, mainly Larch trees have been felled that have become diseased. Apparently many of them  may have been planted as a crop post WWII which might make you feel better about it but doesn’t make it look any better. A bit thought provoking and sobering for Earth Day.

We made our way down to Coppice Pond which you can now walk right around (at weekends anyway.) The swan was doing his duty seeing off the Canada Geese and we had a glimpse of the pen on the island presumably on her nest, there was also a Coot’s nest out on the posts in the centre of the pond. Spring is going on as usual there. 
We then went on to The Ivy Kitchen for a cup of tea and a piece of lemon drizzle cake. We sat outside and it wasn’t unpleasant. A bit of hazy sun and no wind made it feel pretty warm particularly compared with the last few days, I was over dressed.

Quite a few bluebells on the way back down to the cricket field and lovely fresh greens from the new leaves on the Beech trees.

Whatever they do with the woods we are still very lucky to have this resource on our doorstep to walk in and enjoy and you always meet at least one person you know, today we met three.

In the extra , now added to the collage, you can see some of the logs stacked up alongside Coppice Pond.