Issue #8 The Miscellaneous Adventures Digest

A new website, new work and a year in the Lakes.

Well, another full week! On Monday we launched the latest iteration of our website, which we think does a better of job of showing who we are and what we do. Miscellaneous Adventures has always been something of tangle of the various strands of the things we do and it probably always will be, but this feels a little more concise and simplified which is a good thing, I think. Thank you to those who shared it or gave us feedback.

Monday was also notable in that it was my first day of conservation contracting since going back to working for myself. I was all the way down near Brigsteer in the South Lakes working with the lovely team from Woodmatters, cutting spruce regeneration and re-spacing birch trees to create what will be a beautiful broadleaved woodland in the future. It felt good to be out grafting all day again, but my body is going to take a few weeks to get up to speed.

This week also saw my first day with The Coppice Co-op which I’m happy to say I’m now officially a member of. I’ll be working with them 2 days a week throughout the seasons cutting coppice, charcoal burning, making cleft oak fencing, gates and all manner of traditional coppice products. We’ve been out cutting hazel coppice and also working on a nature reserve selectively felling trees in an area being converted to wood pasture; it’s been a joy to be out properly working in the woods again.

And yet, these were not the only significant milestones: Wednesday the 11th marked one year since we left the woods to embark on our new life in the Lake District! Instead of writing about it too much (we already posted about it over on Instagram) we recorded a new podcast episode, allowing ourselves to reflect on the year past, talk about highlights, lowlights, things that have surprised us and how we feel now about having left the woods one year on.

One of our first hikes after moving back in January 2022

Anyway, this has been a very newsy newsletter. I’m hoping that moving forward this can be a space for sharing knowledge, thoughts and findings on Nature and conservation and perhaps even a place to build a community of like minded folks doing similar things. If you have any thoughts on things you’d like to see more of in our newsletters then let us know in the comments below. For now though, I’m quite pleased I’ve simply been able to write something every week for eight weeks…

We hope you’ve had a good week and have another good week ahead.

Warm wishes until next time,

Andrew, Emma and Benji x