Thanks to a welcome break in the rain, the heli-lifting team managed a productive afternoon’s work today, transporting dumpy bags filled with stakes and guards up to the planting site.
The difficult terrain of Fremington Edge, coupled with heavily restricted access, and sheer scale of the planting site, have made the logistics of our scheme extremely challenging, at every step of the way.
Simply assembling all the materials on the opposite side of the valley had already involved several days of work by a four-strong team on the ground, and several more still for the sorting and organising: We are technically planting two neighbouring allotments, and (due to the variance in altitude and soil) these are divided into two different zones, each with a different planting density and species composition. That’s a lot of labelling!
We now eagerly await the arrival of our 25,000 sum trees…
NB Heli-lifting part 2 is pencilled in for Friday (if the weather cooperates). Good views can be enjoyed from the lay-by on Arkengarthdale Road.
Liz
The Heggs-Castle Renaturing Project 
Could you not have used horses?
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Horses would certainly be a viable option for the ongoing maintenance of the woodland. Our neighbours breed Dales ponies which are perfectly suited to our climate/terrain and could potentially be incorporated into our regenerative grazing regime, longer term.
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Just to add to Liz’s reply… the planting materials were delivered on a few articulated lorries to a point which is on average a mile away from the planting site. To get the materials on site requires a two mile round trip, the crossing of a ford which at this time of the year is only passable some of the time and is then up a steep and rocky newly created track.
Our contractor obviously thought a helicopter was a cheaper and easier alternative (and so did I when I did a similar uplift in the area a few years ago). Martin WW
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Thanks. I was just interested in why that particular solution.
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