Exploring the woods: posted by Terry

22 August 05 – a lovely morning.
I spent about 3 hours in the wood choosing useful spaces and planning a cunningly twisted pathway between them. The entrance will be at the south/west corner of the wood (away from the secondary school field). There is a broad gap in the trees there which, with a little remodeling, could become an almost circular space for the outdoor classroom. 3 trees need to come down though I want to leave 2 of them (silver birch) as two metre high stumps to act as gate posts towards another pair of silver birch which will form the main entrance. Wonderfully this entry path is almost exactly south/north which bodes very well for the sundial I want to build. From there I just followed my nose and the route almost planned itself. You can tell how much I was looking around by all the twists and turns in the path! Having walked and marked the path several times I then measured it out and it was exactly 100 steps from start to finish – Yet another good omen!

31 August 05 – another lovely sunny morning.
This was another walk around the wood to explain my route to the headteacher and the man who organises the chainsaws so that we could decide on which trees and branches had to go and which had to stay. The trail is mostly to the front of the wood so quite a lot of undergrowth from the back of the wood (near the houses) can be cleared to provide branches for sculptures and chippings for the path. The 3 trees that I want cutting for the entrance are to be cut on the 19th September (my first day in) so that pupils can see where some of the resources are coming from and reinforce the recycling message.