What We Did Winter 2025

The Greensand Trust Quarterly Report: January to March 2025

Education

January to March saw the education team, supported by our wonderful education volunteers, working with 7 different groups.

Students from Central Bedfordshire College continued to regularly visit Rushmere Country Park carrying out practical conservation management supporting their coursework. Their studies learned about threatened heathland habitats and helped develop their understanding. The students volunteered over 7 different sessions.

Maulden Lower School year 2 pupils enjoyed their visit to Maulden Woods with the team for a spring woodland walk and heathland investigations.

Our 2024 - 2025 Youth Rangers graduated at the end of February. The young Rangers explored the woodland habitats of Rushmere and Linslade Wood (courtesy of Central Bedfordshire Council) learnt about, and monitored small mammals, and carried out practical woodworking coppicing and other conservation tasks. Their final celebration event involved a presentation for parents, family and friends led by the young people themselves.

A simple introduction to bird watching for families of all ages was held at Tiddenfoot as a half term event. Seven families and a total of 21 people joined us on a gentle walk around the lake and challenged themselves to our fun Bird Bingo discovering different birds on the lake.

Sand themed visits were hosted for nearly 60 Southcott Lower School pupils in March. Two interactive classroom sessions were delivered to year 3 pupils in Leighton Linslade including a focus on local heritage, quarry safety and geology linking to their rocks and soils topic.

We attended a ‘Sustainability in Education’ conference in February participating in a workshop for teachers and school staff highlighting local environmental education offers. Over 100 delegates, a mixture of Primary Secondary and FE schools were involved and we received very positive feedback and some future interest.

Shuttleworth College students visited Maulden Wood and heath in February for a focus on heathlands as part of their diploma in land and wildlife management. The students visited twice, and learnt how the Trust manages our volunteers and the ecology of heathland habitats, before undertaking practical heathland management as supervised volunteers themselves.

31 Year 4 pupils from Swanbourne School visited the Ouzel meadows and riverside walk in Leighton for their River studies with us, enjoying the spring sunshine and observing the river habitat, comparing the river and canal environment and measuring river flow speeds.

Biodiversity & Heritage

Consultancy Work

Our ecologist undertook consultancy work as follows:

Pulloxhill Preliminary Roost Assessment
Potters End Barns, Eversholt Preliminary Ecological Appraisal
Barns at Upper Dean Farm
Stewkley Ecological Design Strategy and Great Crested Newt Method Statement
Luton Henge, Leagrave Park Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment
Stable Block at Dean Road, Stewkley Preliminary Ecological Appraisal
Land at Pochard Lake, Great Brickhill Construction Environment Management Plan and Habitat Management Plan

Other - Completed felling licence application for thinning of conifer plantations around Rushmere visitor centre.

Heritage

We have been working with volunteers from Bedfordshire Gardens Trust to research more about the landscape at Sandy Smith Nature Reserve. Historically, this was part of the wider designed landscape of Chicksands Priory, and we have evidence of some of these features still on the reserve, from follies and hop grounds to tree species such as a London Plane.

In preparing Clophill Lakes Nature Reserve, we have been working to interpret Cainhoe Castle, a Scheduled Monument at Clophill Lakes. We have been supported by a number of volunteers, including Bryan undertaking a sabbatical from the RSPB to produce a conservation strategy for the monument, and Paddy who is producing a 3D model of the castle and later manor house. These will help us better understand and interpret the site for all visitors, making the history of the site more accessible.

Communications

During this period the GST Facebook audience gained 335 new followers to reached 2,635 and on Instagram we now have 1,296 (up from 1,172). Our content during this quarter on Facebook was viewed by 225K and reached 45.5K - figures on the page spiked at the end of March with the news that Clophill NR was about to open. We had 2.2K interactions and over 1K link clicks with people keen to find out more.

The dedicated Clophill Lakes Facebook page saw huge growth with 299 new followers in this period, over 46K views reaching over 11K with almost 500 content interactions.

Figures on our GST Instagram were all upward for the same reason - we reached 1.3K profiles, had 12.4K views, 678 content interactions up 61% on the previous quarter.

Top performing post on Facebook was on 28 March announcing the opening of the Lakes – it was viewed by almost 50K (88% of which were not people who already follow us) and produced 195 interactions.

We issued two press releases during the quarter – the first was Celebrating young people doing amazing work for the Greensand Country environment on 26 February and the second was the announcement of the opening of Clophill Lakes which was covered by Bedford Today and the BBC.

Electronic newsletters were sent out to our 2K+ subscribers in February to promote Rushmere half term events and at the end of March to announce the opening of Clophill Lakes.

Analysis of our Google Search performance showed that the Trust website received over 15K clicks and 162K impressions – well up on our usual figures. The Clophill Lakes homepage entered into the top growing and top performing pages from February.

Facilities and Associated Activities

Tree Tops Café sales were impacted by poor weather and several park closures due to high winds in January, but then improved throughout February and March.

The Visitor Centre welcomed the annual return of the Herons to the Heronry which attracted regular visitors to see them. Our Heron Watch volunteers have been doing a fantastic job of educating and informing our visitors about the spectacle and logging activity.

The native planting area has been given a tidy up and improvement with a small surrounding fence. All works were done by our fantastic volunteers, it is now looking lovely.

Rushmere Events Update

February Half Term: Self-Led Rushmere Bird Trail

February – Heron Watch Starts

Conservation & Ranger Activity

The Ranger team had to deal with aftermath of several periods of high winds and heavy rain, dealing with felling of damaged trees and removing hanging branches. They worked hard to keep the trails clear for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders.

Rushmere Ranger Led Volunteer tasks included scrub removal in Shire Oak Heath and Lords Hill, Heathland restoration, birch, pine and bramble removal in Nightjar Valley and Heathland Restoration in Oak Wood and Lords Hill.

Volunteering & Visitor Services

Following a Volunteer survey we found the feedback invaluable for improving our volunteer processes and experience for our volunteers. The new Volunteer Newsletter proves to be extremely popular and is an ideal way to keep our volunteers in the loop with what we are doing at Rushmere and across the Trust.

Greensand Country

The Greensand Country Landscape Partnership kick-started 2025 with its AGM, re-electing Ali Bradbury from Clophill Heritage Trust as Chair, and welcoming Nigel Carnell as Vice-Chair. As part of the day, we also held a session around the Greensand Ridge Walk, in the first steps of planning its 40^th anniversary in 2026. Conservation charities, local businesses and walking groups all got together to plan out how we can better promote and enhance Bedfordshire’s premier walking route.

We are continuing to work with artist Rachael Presky on our ‘Oh Deer!’ project to create an animation about the impact of deer on the woodlands of the Greensand Ridge. Her animations are combined with photography of what damage deer have done across our nature reserves.

With the Education Team, we were delighted to award £250 to this year’s Greensand Champions, Russell Lower School in Ampthill. They have done brilliant work making the school more energy efficient, creating an Eco Code, and supporting other environmental efforts around the town. A special commendation goes to this year’s Youth Ranger cohort.

Our Charter Member scheme for local businesses continues to grow. We’ve been working closely with members at the Cowshed Café and The Social to support their excellent work in and around Greensand Country.

Finally, planning for this year’s Greensand Country Festival in May is well under way. We will be running another set of guided walks along the Greensand Ridge Walk this year too.