Category: Maintenance

Motorbike update (2.00pm)

This is the damage in Village Green, caused by what is obviously a child’s motorbike. This is an area where the Friends of Southwick Country Park have focused on increasing biodiversity, encouraging vetches, vetchlings and tares as food plants for the caterpillars of increasingly rare butterflies. We have also planted Fritillaria meleagris corms in this area.

Do you know the parents of the child or children who are riding motorbikes around Village Green?

Update 5.00pm

More pictures, from a member of FoSCP, of the damage to Village Green and Cornfield, taken late this afternoon.

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Please: no motorbikes

There have been reports of motorbikes being ridden in the park’s fields. The tyre tracks are mostly in Corn Field, Kestrel Field and Lambrok Meadow and seem to show that the bikes enter and leave by the bridge into Lambrok Close. The only motorised vehicles allowed in the park are those maintenance vehicles authorised by Wiltshire Council, and mobility vehicles.

Continue reading “Please: no motorbikes” →
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On the fifth day of Christmas…..

…we are foregoing the five gold rings and sending you, instead, five of Clive Knight’s pictures of the park’s Christmas floodwaters.

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PROJECTS PROGRAMME

Background

by Ian Bushell

The following programme of actions was taken as an outcome of the review of the park on 27th January 2013 by the Wiltshire Countryside Team and Friends of Southwick Country Park. It is intended that this is a living document: a record of previous projects, tasks undertaken, an update of works carried out during 2020, and a review of the park in general.

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Contractors have cut the hedge between the central path and the pond. It does look a bit brutal at the moment, we know, but all these stumps will make vigorous new growth in the spring.

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More handbrake turns

These are photographs taken last weekend, early on Sunday morning. Whoever it is who is churning up our car park does it on Saturday night; if you know him or her please ask them to stop. Please tell them that our poor car park’s surface is not tarmac, it is rolled planings, and will not last long under such treatment.

Thank you.

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The last work party before lockdown

Yesterday was FoSCP’s last work party in the park until after this period of lockdown ends. If all goes well, we will next meet on Wednesday, 9th December.
Park users, if you see that there is something to be fixed or damage to be mended, please contact us and we will do our best.

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No bridges, please.

Planning application 18/10035/OUT

Above is the Parameter Plan submitted by RPS with planning application 18/10035/OUT. If you look carefully, there are two grey dotted lines that run from the red site boundary, over the Lambrok Stream, and into the park. Right at the bottom of the key, they are labelled potential foot/cycle links and we assume that a foot/cycle link that crosses the Lambrok will do so on a bridge.

Continue reading “No bridges, please.” →
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A Walk In The Park

by Ian Bushell

I had a quick wander round the park this afternoon to see what needs doing, to assess the ragwort situation in the fields, and look at the tree damage done by the wind. There were three Roe Deer under the Owl Oak in the Church Lane field across the Lambrok, where they are planning to build houses..

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Litter Pickers Inc.

Newspapers, online and off, have been bombarding us with headlines like this one from the Guardian:

Littering epidemic in England

We would just like to say: Not in our park, there isn’t; our park is pristine. Our park goers pick up their litter (and often other people’s litter as well) and put it in the bins.

Thank you.

Pictures by DKG

Wasp woodwork

Wasps have stripped wood from the fence  in the picnic area, leaving light-coloured lines on the weathered grey boards. All British social wasps make their nests out of paper and they make the paper out of wood fibres and saliva.

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Resurfacing the car park

You may have noticed the enormous heap of road-planings that spent a while in the far corner of the car park taking up several parking spaces.

Last week they were used to resurface the main car park, to establish a paved track through the bottom of the Arboretum where the rubbish lorry turns, and to fill some of our muddiest patches.

The car park had to be closed for a few days because the weather was too hot for the planings to harden properly. Thank you for your patience.

Hopefully, the new surface will see us safely through the coming winter.

Metal detectors

Wiltshire Council policy on metal detecting

Wiltshire Council does not allow metal detecting by the public on land it owns for the following reasons:

  • Much of the countryside owned by Wiltshire Council is let to third parties, usually for agriculture
  • Were metal detecting/digging by permit allowed in public open spaces it may encourage non-permit holders to detect or dig
  • The council could be left with diggings and unfilled hollows making it unsafe for livestock, farm machinery and, if on public open space, the public
  • There could be damage to sites and features of interest, including archaeology, vegetation and wildlife habitats.

Somewhere between fifty and sixty teenagers gathered in the park, under the Lone Oak, yesterday evening, to celebrate somebody’s fifteenth birthday. It’s hard to imagine how such an event could not have ended badly.

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