Friends in Dry Places

What a delight to welcome 17 new friends from the Hindolveston Eco Club to our Felbeck Trust sites at Wood Norton and Hindolveston on Wednesday. This group has only recently been set up but already they have a broad membership – including young children, parents, grandparents, and qualified and professional ecologists – all passionate about helping wildlife and nature around their village. It was a pleasure to see Geoff Morley of the National Trust’s Riverlands project who also joined us.

A great turnout!

Given the kind weather, we spent only a short time introducing ourselves at the church rooms, then set out in convoy to get feet on the ground and explore these two beautiful surveyor’s allotments together under Trevor's expert guidance. Even though the Hindolveston site is walking distance from the village, few of our visitors had realised they were welcome there – fortunately that has now been rectified!

Water levels at both sites are down considerably at the moment – at Hindolveston the ponds are bone dry – but there was still plenty to see and talk about. And the recent dry weather hadn’t prevented an explosion of thistles and nettles in the Wood Norton car park – fortunately Trevor, John and Bev managed to do some judicious clearing beforehand!

At the end of the visit we were stood chatting in the lay-by when two Raven flew over, heading towards Melton Park – a welcome addition to the Hindolveston bird list. All in all a very interesting couple of hours getting to know each other, finding common ground, and getting excited about what more we might do to support each other.

Bev Taylor