A few weeks back I was asked to look at a scrub clearing job up at Lynchmere Ridge. ‘A bit of holly’ said the landowner. It turned out that the job was part of the ‘Heathlands Reunited’ project that is being run by the South Downs National Park and funded from the Heritage Lottery Fund. What was required was a 250 metre long by 20 metre wide corridor that would form part of the link up between Lynchmere Common to the west and Marley Common to the east. A ‘bit of holly’ turned out to be two very large thickets with lots of gorse and birch scrub in-between.

Not ones to shy away from a challenge, John and I got stuck in and spent a total of 8 days on site. It was also a chance to try out a new 2-stroke capstan winch which has a single-line pull rating of 1 tonne. It meant that we could winch out the holly in whole-tree length straight to the fire sites, thus saving a lot of time and effort. With the addition of pulleys we could offset the direction of pull and also double up the load capacity of the winch.

As well as the winch, we were fortunate that the landowner used a tractor and swipe to clear a lot of the gorse and birch scrub. This meant that we could cover the ground much quicker which was just as well as there was an awful lot of holly for our saws to deal with . At the end of the 8th day we were finally able to stand back and admire both our work and the newly opened view to either end of the site.

We received many compliments on our work from the numerous dog walkers that use the site on a daily basis. It’s always nice to know that your efforts are appreciated by the general public. In the end, it was a tough but very rewarding job to do, although I think I have seen enough holly these past 8 days to last me a lifetime!