These volunteers are easily pleached!

It was Monday 14th November and the North Lakes hedgelaying season had to start with the hundreds of metres of hedges needing to be layed. We decided to start with a hedge at Dunthwaite because of the ease of access to the site and two volunteer days back to back later that week. Before the two volunteer days we needed to prepare to lay the hedge. This involved letting the tenant farmer know we were going to be working on his land, followed by removing the barb from the hedge and thinning out any unwanted stems ready for the hedge to be layed. The following picture shows what the hedge looked like on our arrival to the site.

As can be seen from this picture (above) the hedge was made up of numerous small coppices mainly hazel, a scattering of hawthorn, blackthorn, willow and oak.

This is a picture of the first volunteer day consisting of six Fix the Fells volunteers. The volunteers were split into two hedgelaying teams and one team that were "Fire Guardians".
Below is Martin and Ian laying a stem, Martin (in blue) is putting in the pleaching cut with a billhook and Ian is carefully positioning the stem in the correct place.























The following day we returned to the hedge with our weekly volunteers to finish the 60m section and burn the remaining brash. The final picture illustrates the 60m stretch layed in three days...off to a good start with the hedgelaying season thanks to the volunteers and the Borrowdale estate team.