Education

The summer months were busy for the education team hosting a variety of end of term school visits, uniformed group visits, school assemblies and summer family events including the return of our annual BUG Labs.

We worked with 233 young people on educational visits and were supported in this with 45 hours from education volunteers.

We presented two assemblies to over 530 pupils at Tennyson Road School in Luton on behalf of the Bedfordshire Swift Group, highlighting the declining swift population and raising awareness of these amazing birds locally.

Pupils from Dovery Academy, St Leonards Lower and Clipstone Brook Lower school visited Rushmere Country Park to compare different habitats and learn about plants and animals.

Towards the end of the summer term, older pupils from Clipstone Brook Lower school visited Rushmere for our Junior Rangers session and year 2 pupils from Maulden Lower School enjoyed visiting the Working Woodlands Centre, Maulden Wood and Maulden Heath.

With other groups, The Barton Beaver Scouts enjoyed finding plenty of aquatic creatures at the pond at The Working Woodlands Centre (Maulden Wood) and the Harlington Beaver Scouts joined us at Wadelows Nature Reserve to explore their wonderful buttercup meadow with some bug hunting.

We were also excited to work with ‘Carers in Beds’ at Rushmere leading a small family group to discover more about the park and the birds that can be found there.

Summer BUG Labs took place at Linslade Wood and Tiddenfoot in Leighton Linslade, Blue Waters in Houghton Regis, Studham Common and Rushmere this year in partnership with Central Bedfordshire Council and The Bedfordshire Natural History Society. Nearly 70 young people joined us on these events over two weeks. The first event at Rushmere focussed on heathland creatures as part of Heathland Awareness Week. Although we recorded some impressive species lists, the green tiger beetle still eluded us!

The Autumn term has seen the start of our WISE Wood programme at The Working Woodlands Centre and Maulden Wood and we have welcomed 10 young people from a local academy to join us for 5 sessions on a journey discovering the local woodland and its varied benefits. Autumn also marks the start of the Trust’s Youth Ranger scheme this year based at Rushmere. We have 9 enthusiastic young people signed up for the 6-month programme and look forward to working with alongside them.

 

Partnerships & Development Projects

The Trust has joined the ‘Eastern Region Accessible Parks Forum’, where professionals managing country parks and similar facilities exchange knowledge, good practice and ideas from across a wider area.  The next meeting of the Forum, in November, is taking place at Rushmere Country Park, which should provide helpful feedback on how we can make the Park and its facilities even more accessible to people.

The Trust continues to support the development of the Bedfordshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy, with the current focus on identifying the key priorities for the Strategy to guide local action and decision-making in the future.  Through its role with the Bedfordshire Local Nature Partnership the Trust is leading on the Prioritisation process, with a long-list of suggested priorities for nature recovery which were out to consultation until October.

 

Poor water quality in our rivers and streams, and its impacts on wildlife, continues to be a major concern both locally and nationally.  The ‘Riverfly’ monitoring scheme has been designed to enable volunteers to sample key groups of species and be able to detect when there are potential problems.  The scheme operates nationally, and with training having been delivered by the Upper and Bedford Ouse Catchment Partnership, co-ordinated by the Trust, we now have trained volunteers operating on the Flit at Clophill Lakes and on the River Ouzel and Clipstone Brook in Leighton-Linslade, plus Trust Director of Development Jon Balaam, and Chloe Apicella of the Wildlife Trust BCN are both now qualified to train others in the scheme.  To round the training off in September, a final course on an ‘Extended’ Riverfly scheme was hosted by the Trust.  The weather thought it could hamper both travel and site visit plans, with significant flooding across the area and the site proposed for a visit inaccessible! But a last minute switch to Duck End Nature Reserve in Maulden not only saved the day, but also threw up some really good results in terms of invertebrates caught – multiple water scorpions from one of the ponds and alderfly larvae (which are sensitive to pollution) in the stream.

Sites we maintain

Ampthill

The Trust led a Corporate Volunteer event in Ampthill Great Park for a group from Central Beds Council on behalf of Ampthill Town Council (ATC). The group spread woodchip and cleared the area to the left of the ATC building and carried out ragwort pulling in the arena.

We rescued a trough from a swamp that was caused by a water leak and relocated it to a more suitable area in preparation for the returning cattle.

As ever we carried out general park maintenance concentrating on entrances, popular walking routes, around bins, benches, signs etc and monitored these areas regularly.

There was a GST Vols day at the church yard in Ampthill. We strimmed the long grass that is left for the wildlife and cut back once a year. We discovered a great crested newt crawling up one of the graves which meant all work had to stop so we concentrated on cutting the very large hedge in the cemetery.

Tree inspections were carried out after a felling request from ATC. These trees have now been felled since they were requiring immediate attention. The trees were in poor condition and located close to pathways with high foot traffic.

Eastern Sites

In July the Eastern Volunteers worked on ragwort control at Sandy Smith Reserve, to protect the surrounding hay fields and horse paddocks, continued with balsam control at Clophill Lakes, and started our annual bracken reduction at Maulden Heath.  In August, woodland planting maintenance works were carried out at Sandy Smith Reserve, hay cuts completed at Steppingley Hospital, The Working Woodlands Centre and the Deadman’s Hill A6 RNR.  We also had the six-week second cut of bracken at Maulden Heath.  September saw ditch clearance works in the woods at Sandy Smith, hay cuts at Duck End Nature Reserve and Ampthill Churchyard and fencing and gate installation works at Sandy Smith Reserve.  Throughout the quarter the Thursday vols continued with fencing and balsam control at Clophill Lakes, along with further ditch works at Sandy Smith.

Rushmere Country Park

After a long period out of action the Thrift Road barrier is now back in operation. An incident resulted in the Police being called occurred in August when a group of people were caught fishing in the Stockgrove Lake who then turned hostile threatening the ranger with violence.

The summer quarter is the time when most of the grass cut and rake tasks occur, with numerous tasks taking place around the site including Marshy Meadow, Lords Hill, Stockgrove lower meadows and Sundial meadow. Other volunteer tasks have included bracken pulling, fence repairs around the bike area perimeter and Bakers Wood boundary and thistle pulling at the Rushmere entrance (the newly planted area).

Biodiversity & Heritage

Facilities and Associated Activities

Rushmere Country Park

Visitor Centre & TreeTops Café

The visitor centre continues to rotate its displays and retail has been extended out into the atrium to allow us to sell slightly larger items and firewood from the park.

TreeTops Café offered a Summer Specials menu with food such as Caesar salad, burgers and hot dogs. We also introduced Walls ice cream as well as the usual Lickalix lollis and ice cream tubs.

TreeTops café struggled with staffing in the kitchen over the summer period, we advertised for an assistant chef to help us cover a 7 day rota but we were not successful in recruiting. This resulted in the occasional reduced menu during weekday periods.

Event Review

July Summer Fayre & Dog Show – was well attended, we had a few rain showers but it didn’t spoil the event.

July - Rushmere Horse Event was successful, no issues reported.

August – Bug Labs run by education team and Xplorer by volunteers.

July / Aug – We updated our nature rubbing trail with some new rubbing plaques and this was available throughout Summer.

Site Development

Park visitor numbers for Jun, Jul, Aug approx 98,000 visitors.

Rushmere Country Park was successful in retaining its Green Flag status for the 5th consecutive year.

New park maps were created - a main map and the option of downloading pdf maps for the whole park or for cycling and horse riding.

We commissioned a new play area that includes a heron climbing frame and balance obstacles and a climbing nest. This play area also includes a slide, a basket swing and 2 x 25m zip lines. The play area is currently under construction on-site and will open soon.

Volunteering

Volunteers were busy across all areas this quarter with ongoing practical and conservation work, visitor services and education whilst also supporting our events such as the Summer Fayre & Dog Show.

We continued to support Duke of Edinburgh and Work Experience volunteers and held our Annual BBQ event for our Volunteers at our WWC site and was well attended with over 50 people providing an ideal opportunity for The Greensand Trust to say thank you and meet with our wonderful volunteers.

Greensand Country

We’ve been working on a number of projects through the summer, including our ‘Putting Peat on the Map’ project, looking at peat in the Flit Valley. Consultants were out surveying land all along the valley to better understand what peat remains. Students from Cranfield University presented their natural capital account as part of the project, giving a ‘valuation’ for all the benefits that peatland habitats bring.

Thanks to funding from the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, we are working with local artist and illustrator Rachael Presky on a commission to raise awareness of the impact that deer have on woodland. We took Rachael around Sandy Smith Nature Reserve to see first-hand the detrimental impact deer can have.

July saw us kick off our heathland awareness campaign, with guided walks, talks, and family activities to promote the heathland that is found all along the Greensand Ridge. We also attended the Leighton Buzzard Canal Festival (pictured) where we were raising awareness of what people can do to help nature recovery.

Throughout the summer we have supported local businesses with the Greensand Country Charter Scheme, offering drop-in sessions and holding our annual networking event enabling local businesses to come together to network.

We have also been supporting other teams across the Trust, particularly at Clophill Lakes Nature Reserve where we’ve been collating memories and photographs of the quarrying to inform how we interpret the history of the site.