A six o'clock start this morning to get over to our North England Office for half past 8. The journey started with light rain when I  left the house and steadily increased to heavy rain with fog as I crossed the Pennines. By the time I reached Bellingham there was considerable flooding in the fields and on the roads and a brand new pond forming in front of the office, complete with the reflections of drowning daffodils and silver birches, weeping in sympathy.
It was a good day to stay inside and do some 'Training for Trainers.' Manual Handling and Pollution Control in this case. Because of the heavy nature of the work foresters run high risks of back injury and when there is extraction machinery on site churning up the ground, there is danger of silt and oil leaking into water courses. Delivering training to staff to deal with these factors is good for both people and the environment, so I was very pleased to have the opportunity to go on these courses.
Visiting other offices also means you get to meet up with other staff, see old friends, get new perspectives and find out a bit more about the wider picture of the organisation. Over lunch it was great to meet up with our area ecologist and get an update on the Kielder ospreys' live cams and some of the other wildlife projects in the pipeline. We get 3 days paid volunteering time a year Yeah! so helping survey pine martens might be a worthwhile use of this.