April 2014 - week 7: Dame Helen Ghosh (Director General, National Trust) in the New Forest

On a very, very, very wet April Friday, Dame Helen Ghosh (Director General, National Trust) came along to visit Stockbridge Down and New Forest. And I must say, it was a complete pleasure hosting her. She was superb company all day and was so interested in everything our countryside team are doing.

After a brief tour around Stockbridge Down to see the views through the drizzle, the Iron Age barrows and our in-hand Wiltshire Horn sheep, we went onto Foxbury (....where I did take some pictures!)

As it was so wet, we viewed most of Foxbury from the estate vehicles and the engagement trailer, affectionately known as "The Caravan of Love!" (....don't ask!) Laura, Lee and Dylan chatted about everything from Nightjars to Capability Brown to 40mph fungal spores! I know....Helen's quite an all- rounder!

Then onto Lyndhurst (....a few brief & nervous moments as I confused Lymington with Lynhurst, but we did go to the right place and I appear to be still employed 24 hours later...although it is a Saturday, so let's give it until Monday!)

Dame Helen then presented to a packed house in the New Forest visitor centre, hosted by Alison Barnes, CEO of New Forest National Park.

It was a really enjoyable and interesting talk, followed by a lively debate (...passionate parties in the New Forest never miss an opportunity!)

After a New Forest Mark lunch, it was off to Hurst Spit to look at proposals for the wind turbine development off Isle of Wight:

And then finally onto Beaulieu, where we saw Dan Snow filming a WW2 documentary piece with Ian Lavender for ITV Meridian. I tried to get a walk on part as an extra, but they said that I was too wet and too short (....Dan Snow is really tall...you could see him from space, I reckon!) 

With my TV debut on hold, we decided to cut our loses and head for the dry indoors and a well-earned cuppa.

I hope that Dame Helen enjoyed herself. It was lovely to meet her and we enjoyed showing off our work in New Forest and Stockbridge. Although only in the job for a year, she described her feeling working at National Trust as ".....emerging from a chrysalis." I know how she feels.

April 2014 - week 7.5: Mottisfont estate walk

As I'd been tweeting about the Mottisfont estate walk, I thought I'd better take my own advice and walk it, so that's exactly what I did last weekend. Our Countryside Manager - Dylan Everett - says that this is the most beautiful time of year to see the estate...and he wasn't wrong!

This is the view of the Alms Houses near Dunbridge station and the River Dunn. Simply stunning.

The longer version of the walk takes about 3 hours and the real highlight was the endless sea of bluebells near Spearywell wood:

Bluebells as far as the eye can see - I don't think I've ever seen such a stunning display.

The trail takes walkers through ancient woodland, farmland and the village of Mottisfont, with views over the River Test and some of the best countryside in the UK. I know that I'm very biased, but I totally recommend it!

April 2014 - week 6: Easter at Mottisfont

Firstly, "Happy Easter" to everyone. 

I worked at Mottisfont on Good Friday and Saturday.....mainly in the car park as it turned out! The recent dry spell has helped to dry out our estate at Mottisfont, which in the early morning sunshine  looks stunning:

You can see in the shot (bottom left) the Cadbury's gazebo, which was the starting point for the Easter trail. The children loved wandering around the estate, collecting clues to claim their Easter egg at the end. Great fun and very popular:

Our swans held their own though and didn't seem at all inconvenienced by the 3,000 visitors who turned up on Good Friday. Many families came for the trail, but also to see the very popular Litchfield exhibition in its last weekend.

I think most people had a great time, although it got a bit hairy in the car park on Friday at one point. Still, we worked through it and did our very best to get people parked as quickly as possible. I really did ache afterwards though and managed to pull a muscle in my groin as I ran around trying to find spaces for people. 

I finished up collecting litter and wiping down the kiosk in the garden.....all good fun and totally worth it! Well done to everybody who worked or volunteered over Easter at Mottisfont and "thank you" if you came to visit us.

April 2014 - week 5: Jonny Bass (Rose gardener)/John Lennon (Beatle)

At the end of last year, Jonny Bass our Assistant Head Gardener (recently promoted), visited New Zealand and USA as part of a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust fellowship. This week, he presented what he got up to during his trip to our volunteers:

The criteria for the fellowship award was that it must benefit the wider community - apparently one woman interviewed wanted a fellowship award to visit Transilvania to go jam preserve-making. So the competition was tough!

Jonny's first stop was Auckland ( ...and yes, there is a National Trust of New Zealand), where he met granddaughter of Nancy Stein (famous rosarian, who knew Graham Thomas) and visited Fern Glen, as well as Auckland Botanic Garden.

Jonny went on to Los Angeles, where he went to San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, Red Rose Ridge - an entire ridge of rambling red roses, uncultivated, just growing in sand. Jonny's last stop was New York, where he met Stephen Scanyellow, who is President of their Heritage Rose Society and saw a garden built over a disused railway track and visited Harlem Heritage Rose District, where local residents have developed, planted and maintained rose gardens, which has reduced litter and made places look much, much better.

On from Jonny's fascinating insights on roses, this weekend, I had the chance to visit the National Trust's number one rated visitor experience property: the Beatles' homes in Liverpool. And I must say, I can see why. The enthusiasm, knowledge and passion of the tour guides who delivered the talk, was outstanding. The properties had been very thoughtfully restored too. Just being in the rooms where songs such as "Love me do," "Please, please me" and "When I'm 64" were written was amazing. As a life-long Beatles fan, I loved it. But then again, I was always going to!

So a tale of two "Johns" (...or at least a "Jonny" & a "John"!) Both remarkable in their own ways, both creative and excellent in their own fields of expertise and both linked by the National Trust!

March 2014 - week 4: a day in the life

I wouldn't say the last two days are typical, but certainly they show some of the stuff going on at any one time on a National Trust property.

8:30am: meet in the farm yard car park with Countryside Rangers, our two Sparsholt work experience students and our volunteers to go charcoal making:

I discovered there's a real art to this. Ryan, our Ranger, has perfected this over many years, so showed us how to empty the kiln, retrieve the charcoal, recycle the brown wood and start stacking the wood inside for the burn on Monday. I looked like I'd been sweeping a chimney afterwards! We sell the charcoal at Mottisfont and I'm told it's really good quality.

11:00am - Onto see the bat conservationist. Ian found the Barbastelle bats on our estate 10 years ago and he asked to come back to see how the colony are doing. This is one of the rarest bat breeds in Europe, so it's a really important colony.

We await the report with interest after leaving Ian up a tree inspecting the roost.

12 noon: Oakely fishing beet. This is where FM Halford perfected the art of dry-fly fishing in the early part of the last century and is truly stunning:

We went to have a look at how the repairs to the bunny are coming along. 18 months ago, if you'd have said to me "We have a crack in our bunny," I'd have thought you a bit weird and wondered how a fluffy little rabbit had got into such a state! Now I know that it's a pretty big problem if the bunny in question is supporting a river and nearby houses could flood if we don't take action:

We installed a coffer damn several weeks ago to protect the bunny whilst the work was going on and the construction company are working by the river to repair it. It should be ready for the start of the fishing season.

And then today, I checked out progress on the ground works for our new visitor centre:

...coming along nicely; then into the farm yard to look at options to make use of some of our barns:

We hope to be able to use this for storage and a place for our countryside and gardens teams to rest up and organise themselves. Finally, onto an interpretation project meeting where we were looking at the latest sketches of how the priory looked originally:

This is massive news and I cannot wait until September when we will be able to show visitors a 3D rendering of how it once looked. Apparently the Tudor outbuildings were far more extensive than we first thought.

Just a couple of "days in the life!"