Spring is here, so lets get ready for Summer!

When I started writing this week's blog I didn't feel like I had a lot to tell you, but now I've written a list of what we've been up to this week I realise we have actually been really busy. With the nice weather settling in we are starting to gear up for the summer, trying to get things ready and organised for when everything starts growing.

The Ranger and Education teams have been looking at the Education Area, writing a wish list of everything we want there, and what needs fixing. We are now going to work out what is affordable and manageable before cracking on with the work before the summer school groups start visiting.

Next to the ed area, we have started to tidy and organise our fire site. We've had a new very large shelter built there to protect some of the old equipment and spare fence supplies, so Ruby has made a plan for where everything is going. We are now freeing all of the piles of stuff from the overgrowth and moving it to where Ruby points to. It sounds like a really dull task but we have kept a lot of old equipment and signs, and generally anything that has ever been used on the Fen so its like a going back through the history of the Fen!

A fancy panroramic photo of our fire site before we have organised it.

We've been getting on with making the new duckboards that will go around the site next winter. It may seem like we're making them very early but we want to be able to drive them out on site in the summer when the ground is dry. We have enough materials to make 75 and we have now made 16, with Mike making more as I type. Mike has made a fantastic jig so that you just place the pieces of wood in the slots and screw them together. It makes the job so much quicker and easier.

Andy, Anita and me making duckboards

Other little jobs we've been up to are, finishing the cutting of Butterfly Trail, checking out some of the windblown trees in Gutterbridge and more fencing work on Tubney Fen.

This afternoon Lois and I are heading out to the freshly mown Harrison's Drove car park to install some new benches. So we will have a nice new base for people to be able to explore the wider Nature Reserve.