Wimpole competition

On Saturday I participated in a competition at the Wimpole Estate Cambridgeshire. A rather fine day given the weather conditions we have experienced recently. The hedge was a maiden of about fifteen or so years that had been nibbled by deer and hares in its early life and flailed repeatedly at about  the five foot mark and then left to grow up for about four years. This presented the usual problems of multiple stems at ground level, a tightly knotted middle section and long straggly tops. 

I originally intended to cut and lay with hand tools only but decided against this after drawing my cant and checking the number of large awkward stems but did try to keep the chainsaw work to a minimum.

Fortunately we were laying from the field side as there was a large water-filled ditch on the other, however this did cause a few problems when laying off the first stems as these were tall and heavy and prone to falling down the bank and needed to be propped up in many cases.

The finished result was not too bad and won me a second place in the SoE open class.

All in all a very enjoyable day rounded off with some great venison stew and home made bread courtesy of Simon Damant of the Wimpole Estate.