Years ago when I was a new member of the parks department I went to a few meetings to look at some land that was going to become council land. They were small pockets of land along the A33 corridor. The County Council was building a new road and the borough was going to end up looking after it. Would some of the land be of interest to the parks department?
I sat and looked at the plans. One of the problems I had already discovered was that some of Reading’s parks had Snowberry bushes planted in them, and we were trying to get rid of them. The county council was planning on planting more. Lots more.
These people had jackets and ties and letters after their names. I was completely new to this, no dress sense nor any qualifications. When I queried the proposed Snowberry bushes I was asked what I thought would be more appropriate.
Hazel.
They wrote that down and looked up “and?”
And more Hazel.
One of those bits of land became known as the Holy Brook Nook, 30 years since I had that meeting. The land never became leisure land, it stayed part of the highway, and it was managed by that department, not mine.
Nowadays I work at RISC a few hours a week. There is a roof garden https://risc.org.uk/gardens/roof-garden/ there
They wanted to repair the woven hurdle fencing that surrounds lots of the planting. So off we went to the Holy brook nook in the sunshine and coppiced a few bunches of hazel. That hazel that I had suggested as an alternative to Snowberry.
There’s lots of it, and it’s the perfect time to cut some of it, in the same way as communities would have done for millennia before the industrial revolution
So we cut a load down, bundled it up and took it back to RISC.
The scenic way!
And stacked the hazel in the roof garden ready for use.
On the way we spotted a peregrine sitting on the spire of St Giles church.
So we had a little breather to watch it.
Once we were done I wandered back to the van which was parked a mile away. But with a couple of hours to spare I went via quite a circuitous route. The sun was dropping and the sky was clear. As my free time drew to a close and my responsibilities loomed I got back to the van.
But I didn’t have the key.
And it was just past my dog’s dinner time.
I made a few more poor decisions in the next few minutes and I eventually managed to *lock the van, feed the dog, get to work, get home from work, search for the spare key, remember where the spare key is, walk back to the van, break in (again), find the spare key. On the driver’s seat.
Then all I had to do was drive home. But it was now icy and the windscreen was iced over. clearing it took longer than driving home.
First thing the following morning I had to retrace my steps.
Which did end up being a lovely thing to do. I did my whole route the opposite way I did it the day before.
Although it wasn’t so sunny I didn’t have a bundle of hazel sticks to carry. So I had time to take in views. County Lock from the IDR bridge is a nice one.
And County lock is a special part of the town centre. So my walk wasn’t futile, even if I never did find my keys.
* I made the bright decision to break in to the van. But without a key I couldn’t lock it. So after I got a lift home the van was now unlocked.
Rural Reading 