Nicki Dyas's blog

Ok, so I know I haven't been great at keeping you up to date with the progress of the Skills Builder project!!

Back on the Roaches this week carrying on with footpath restoration. Some of the routes over the top have become very spread out so we were landscaping areas with natural vegetation and rocks to encourage walkers to stay on one path and avoid eroding wider moorland areas.

New groups started this week on the Skills Builder programme so we had the inevitable paperwork to complete but then did some tool maintenance in the work shed to get active.

The last week of the first Skills Builder group today! We had to cancel last week due to the weather so finishing off this week instead.

All about the Rot boxes this week!! We spent Thursday and Friday putting Rot boxes up in the beautiful Cotton Dell Nature Reserve owned by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. You may have seen some of these boxes - there's some at Deep Hayes and Tittesworth so far too.

Busy this week helping to manage a woodland on Thursday by thinning trees to let sunlight reach the woodland floor. This should mean there are lots more plants able to grow because of increased light levels and this will be good for wildlife such as insects, small mammals and birds.

Very cold this week up on the Roaches but the groups still got stuck in to footpath regeneration with Jon and Pete from Staffordshire Wildlife Trust.

We started off in snowy conditions this week constructing a post and rail fence with a Peak District National Park ranger.

This week the Thursday group did some vegetation management at Severn Trent's Tittesworth Reservoir and built habitat piles for wildlife. Some of the group coppiced some Hazel stakes ready for future hedge laying in the next few weeks.

Skills Builder out in any weather!