8-April-25

A working party of eight volunteers met up at our parking space down the lane from Holywell this morning to repair a vandalised fence, plus other activities. This was a nice sunny, warmish day with dry ground under foot.

We have a bit of a problem with motorbike people in the Dene, and in trying to gain access they have damaged the fence by the stile near the humpback bridge (over the old railway line east of Holywell). This is not the first time this has happened.

Anyway, one group of volunteers started work repairing the damaged fence using timber from our store. Having done that they stapled wire mesh to it, to hopefully make it more resistant to damage. This took the whole session. The photos below give an idea of the work.

Photograph A. Repairing fence

Photograph B. Attaching wire mesh

Photograph C. Completed job

Meanwhile other the second group of volunteers checked out a den that had been constructed nearby. The idea was to dismantle it, but it turned out that it had been torched, so there was nothing very much to dismantle. However, there was a lot of litter lying around, and clearing that up gave rise to two black sacks full of litter.

That done, the second group commenced removing ivy from trees in the area around the tunnel. We do this from time to time to keep ivy under control. We would not want it to cover all the trees, but on the other hand it is a native species and provides food for pollinators and birds, so it is just as well that we never have enough time to get rid of it completely.

Our usual leader was away in the Lake District today, so his lady deputy was in charge. Oh, and we enjoyed the cheese scones provided another one of our lady volunteers.

We’ll be back next week for another adventure in the life of Holywell Dene

1-April-25

There was a strong turnout of ten volunteers this morning to enhance the culvert that carries the Holywell side burn under the footpath.

Our venue today was the dip in the south-side path downstream of the Holywell road bridge where a side burn has to be crossed. The old corrugated plastic culvert pipe that carries the side burn under the path has been overwhelmed on several occasions in the past when there has been heavy rain. It has also been blocked up, probably deliberately. The result has been Dene users getting their feet wet when crossing at that point.

We have been contemplating installing a footbridge there for some time, and indeed that may yet come about, but today we decided we would just put a second pipe in alongside the existing one. We happened to have a suitable pipe amongst our reserve of materials, so acquisition wasn’t a problem (although transporting it to the site was a bit of an effort).

So, the morning’s work consisted of:

 Digging a trench alongside the existing pipe. This included using the hand winch to remove a large slab of stone.

 Laying the new pipe in the trench.

 Filling the trench with earth to make a convenient footpath crossing.

 Winching the slab of stone into place at the upstream end of the culvert to protect against flooding.

 Adding gravel from the bed of the burn to give a good footpath surface.

 Dressing the surface with forest litter, sourced on the spot, for a natural look.

Photograph A. Digging out trench

Photograph B. New pipe in place

Photograph C. Completed job

Meanwhile, two volunteers (see photo A) were replacing one of the steps in the flight running down to the side burn. The old one was rotting. We had to hack it out with a mattock, dig the securing stakes out, hammer new stakes in, screw a new cross-timber to the stakes and infill with stones, earth and gravel.

As usual, we picked up the litter we came across. Fortunately a stout plastic bag had been left by some litterer, which we used to put the other litter in for removal and disposal.

The weather was very pleasant for task work today: bright and warmish, with less of a breeze down in the Dene than above. We managed to finish the planned work in good time, so we departed for home only a couple of hours after the start of the session.

15-April-25

Eight volunteers turned up on Tuesday on a cool and potentially damp morning, however the rain held off. The task today was to complete the work started two weeks ago when we installed a second large pipe under the path on the Holywell bridge path in the side burn which drains water from the fields to the south (see report from April 1).

The work involved digging out both sides of the pipe, driving in stakes and then installing prepared boards at both ends to support the infilling soil, gravel and rocks.

Photograph A. Work in progress

The intention is to hopefully prevent the constant erosion of the path when there is heavy rainfall and debris blocks the pipe causing water levels in the side burn to rise and overflow over the path.

Photograph B. Completed crossing (view from downstream)

Photograph C. Completed crossing (view from upstream)

29-April-25

A fine turnout of twelve volunteers were greeted by warm and sunny weather (the hottest day so far this year) for a morning of ivy and sycamore control on the south side of the river upstream of the Holywell road bridge. Three new volunteers joined us this morning – and we hope they will keep coming: the working party has been going for 25 years and hopefully will keep going for 25 more into the future – so, welcome!

The terrain this morning was unfamiliar and difficult (steep slopes!) – a part of the Dene that few people venture into, although there is a well-defined footpath. We started down from the carpark of the Milbourne Arms, where the tools van was parked, to the old Holywell road bridge (now a footbridge) and turned right to go along the riverside path. Just past the Close (small field in loop of river) there is a side path, and this leads towards the burn then along the south bank to the footbridge below Concord House. It was along this path that we were working.

Basically, all we were doing was (as last week) removing ivy from trees by cutting the ivy stems a few feet above ground, and controlling sycamore by removing saplings and lopping off lower branches of larger trees. We found that there were lots of ivy-infested trees at the eastern end of the area where we were working, but hardly any at the western end – presumably because ivy removal work has been done at that end in past years. As for sycamores, perhaps half of all the trees in that area are of that type so we are hardly in danger of making them extinct.

Photograph A. The problem: ivy-clad tree trunk

Photograph B. Removing ivy and sycamore branches

At risk of repetition, here’s the reason we do this work. Ivy, which free-rides on trees by climbing up them, is a native species which produces flower in autumn and berries in spring, both of which are beneficial to wildlife. On the other side of the equation, ivy does over-burden trees and increase the risk of them falling across paths and into the river. Also, many people consider it to be unsightly. Certainly, it looks bad if all the trees are ivy-infested, which was pretty-well the case in the eastern part of today’s work area. Hence the fact that we try to keep ivy under control, if not eradicate it.

As for sycamores, yes they are attractive trees, but they are non-native and tend to take over in British woodland – which is very much happening where we were working. So, we do our best to prevent new sycamores coming up even though it is beyond our capabilities to fell the fully-grown trees.

Photograph C. Removing sycamore branches

The secluded part of the Dene we were in this morning was ringing with birdsong and the woodland was looking fresh and green. Here are some of the wildlife highlights.

 small songbirds: chiffchaff, blackcap, wren, whitethroat, blackbird

 larger birds: mallard, jackdaw, pheasant

 flowers: celandines, white dead nettles, dandelions and many other flowering plants

 flies – lots of them, unfortunately

 one butterfly (too flighty to be identified)

A female mallard was seen on the water with four fluffy ducklings – something we always look out for at this time of the year.

22-April-25

The weather was a bit warmer and brighter this morning for the working party of nine volunteers, and the work was a mixture of river clearance, ivy control and sycamore removal.

The assembly point was Wallridge Drive, near the Holywell gas pumping station. Once we had trundled our wheebarrows full of kit down to the river we split into two groups, as we often do; one group stopping at a logjam on the river below Ridge Way, and the other continuing a bit further downstream. Both teams were working on the north bank of the burn.

The downstream squad were tasked with seeking out and removing ivy and sycamores, and it didn’t take them long to find both. There was an awful lot of ivy, and it would take weeks to deal with it all but we cut out quite a lot on the day. Anyone who is a fan of ivy need have no fear that we will drive it to extinction in the Dene any year soon, but if we keep controlling in this way we can keep it from taking over.

Photograph A. Clearing ivy

The sycamores we dealt with were all saplings; some last year’s growth but many two or three years old. There were also some much larger ones that had been missed on previous culls. We remove young sycamores because they are non-native and can tend to take over in the long term in British woodland.

Meanwhile, further upstream, two of us put waders on and got into the rather cold burn to dismantle a river blockage. The hand winch had to be used to get the larger branches out. The problem was caused by a willow that had collapsed into the water, and its branches were tangled with other branches that had drifted downstream, along with the usual mixture of twigs, litter and scum.

Photograph B. Clearing logjam

This took a long time to clear, with two in the water and two (later three) on the bank moving wet branches and twigs from the river bank to ground well away from the Burn. However, we had some spare time at the end, so two of us went downstream to a minor blockage and cleared that.

All in a morning’s work. You’d hardly know we had been there if you went for a walk in the Dene the following day, but our Hollywell Dene would gradually become a mess if nobody was doing this work. Anyway we like getting our exercise out of doors rather than in the gym!

6-May-25

The volunteer working party returned to last week’s haunt for another session of sycamore and ivy removal this sunny morning.  The turnout was eight and the rendezvous was the carpark of the Milbourne Arms, Holywell.

In a bit more detail, we were working on the south bank of the burn opposite the street known as Dale Top.  Here, pretty-well every tree has ivy, so something had to be done to get it under control.  Don’t worry, we don’t climb up the trees to remove the ivy;  the simple solution is to cut a short length out of the ivy stem about a metre above the ground.  In practice, there can be many ivy stems snaking up the tree, and all have to be severed.  Anyway, this kills off the ivy no matter how high it is growing in the tree, and the dead ivy leaves and twigs eventually fall out of the tree.

On the sycamore front, there are lots of them in that area, but most of them too big to cut down, so we trim the lower branches and pull out any saplings we find.

Photograph A. Clearing sycamores and ivy

We stumbled upon an old den or camp last week, which was badly infested with litter.  Well, we completed the clearance of that eyesore this morning. Among the objects found was a huge, half-buried, tractor tyre inner tube!

Photograph B. Old den (after litter-picking)

Nearby a large pile of dumped material was found – an example of large-scale fly tipping in the past.  In amongst building rubble, this pile was teeming with rotting plastic sheeting and tangles of nylon cord.  We only had time to clear the stuff that was apparent at the surface – and that was several bin-liners full.

Photograph C. Some of the litter!

Add to that the miscellaneous litter scattered round about and we had a field-day on the litter-picking front!  We must have been quite a sight as we trudged back to the van at mid-day carrying lots of litter bags and with two barrows full of tools and larger items of litter.

On a warm, sunny day the birds were singing well. We heard goldfinches, a blackcap, a whitethroat, a robin, a wren and no doubt other creatures.  The trees are fully in leaf now of course and there is a good show of flowers, many of them going to seed already.  The season progresses …

13-May-25

A party of nine volunteers met this morning at the car park at the Milbourne Arms to finish sycamore control and ivy removal from the trees on the stretch of river back on the south side behind the Fat Ox. Tools in wheelbarrows, off we went to where we were working – mindful of the glorious weather we have had lately, with plenty of protection from the sun.

Photograph A. Removing ivy

A couple of volunteers left the main party and headed downstream to clear a camp which had sprung up recently. After removing a couple of bin bags of rubbish they soon returned to the main party.

Taking great care, as some of the trees are right on the river bank and nobody wanted an early-morning dip on the burn, we steady moved towards the old Holywell bridge.

Photograph B. Removing sycamore branch

During our morning break we had some visitors from the local farm to see what these strange people were doing on the other side of their fence.

Photograph C. Inquisitive bovine visitors

We soon cleared all the way down to the bridges so it was decided to do part of the path on the other side of the main road heading towards the oxbow lake. After a good morning’s work we packed up and headed back to the Friends of Holywell Dene van with numerous bags of rubbish to be disposed of properly. Then it was off home for a shower and a bit of lunch.