Two of our regular volunteers have recently gained their third and top John Muir Award. This is a huge achievement requiring sustained commitment and the boys have been working towards it since March.

The photo is of Mark Johnson who has been coming weekly to Hallr Wood. He is an expert on bird identification and can recognize and imitate bird calls. For this award he also helped out at Bath & West Show on our stall there. Here he is showing his award presented to him by Juliet our chair person.

Henry Street gained his Conserver Award some weeks earlier. Henry hopes to go into a career as a bushcraft instructor. Do have a look at the photos of the coracle he built for his Explorer Award which was launched this summer (in the Hallr Wood gallery).

We are now focusing on getting our access up and running and have finally received notification from SSDC that we have been authorised to proceed with the work. Our Forestry and Conservation group have been working on landscaping inside the wood – they have designed a path to connect the car area with the green wood working shelter. They have also improved the bridge and started helping Martyn on the shed extension.

Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive and helpful. Hopefully our planning battles will soon be completely over.

We are really pleased that the new Parish Council is supportive of our work in the community and thank them for their donation of £40 towards the costs of fullfilling our planning conditions at Hallr Wood. This money will be spent on landscaping the access and on hedging, helping us to minimize negative visual affect which is hard to avoid with highways insistence on a 5m access onto a 3m lane.

It was also especially wonderful that CHADs chose to support us, donating £500 from the proceeds of their recent, hilarious production ‘Inspector Drake’s Last Case’. A big thank you to them and all the villagers who attended the play.

We are still struggling with all the bureaucracy attached to meeting our planning conditions and are disappointed we are not yet in a position to proceed with the work. The tree surgeon has begun work around the access – removing a few damanged Norwegian maple trees. This work is fully covered by our Forestry Commission felling licence. The trees in our tree nursery are doing well and are ready to be planted in the hedge when the work is complete.

Anyone who wants to help with the planting or other jobs associated with this work – do get in touch.