Small Tree Felling
The course was fully booked with 4 trainees. Our instructor was Mark Isted.
We met at Mark's home near Newton Abbot with rain clouds to the North. Mark was not worried .... the woods where we would be working usually had the same weather as Torbay which tended to be drier than the rest of the county!! .. famous last words!
When we got to the woods it started drizzling!!!
Our first task was to cut a little 4 legged stool out of a log ... learning how to use the saws gently and to make angled cuts. My "stool" had 3 legs and no seat!! More practice required!!
... by now it was raining steadily ... not that anyone was taking any notice of it. .
Mark then showed us the basic cuts for tree felling ....looked simple. He spread us through the woods to practice on some of the smaller trees... felling, de-limbing and cutting into manageable lengths. "Not so simple as it looks!!" I thought as my tree started to fall down in the wrong direction and got tangled up in another tree!! Despite shaking ... it would not fall to the ground but stayed stubbornly upright! Call for Mark!! ... and not for the last time that day!!
and the rain kept falling and still no one took any notice of it ....
After a wet lunch break we carried on and by going home time we were all soaked to the skin .. but no one seemed to mind!! It had been a good day.
Apparently we had 3 inches of rain locally ... which explained the puddles on the floor of my Defender!!
On the second Saturday ... a very different scene . .. sunlight dappling through the branches and leaves ... idyllic!!! ... we continued tree felling. From time to time we would get together to learn something new or how to solve a problem that had arisen. But for the most part we were working by ourselves in the wood ... learning at our own speed but with Mark never far away if help was needed.
Suddenly the day had gone.... and it was time to go home . ... and the sun still shone!
This course was well worth the new price of £150 ... tree felling with chainsaws is potentially very dangerous. It was a serious subject which was treated extremely seriously. However that did not prevent the course from being 2 days full of interest. I learnt a lot ... and as importantly ... I had a lot of fun..... thoroughly recommended ... in rain or sunshine!
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