Trying out our new mower

Today I was at College Lake, the Wildlife Trust's flagship reserve near here and the site of our Buckinghamshire HQ. The reserve warden, Leo, who you see here, was trying out a brilliant new mower that has recently been bought to help us with scrub management on many of our reserves in the Chilterns. The wonderful thing is that a lot of the money needed for this purchase was raised over the last year by our volunteer group in the Chilterns. It came from two plant and produce markets, a programme of evening talks and guided walks, talks given to other organisations and from donations by particular long-serving volunteers. I'm really proud of our group - rather than continue to moan about the endless round of scrub bashing at our work parties, we raised money for this state of the art mower that will make light work of a lot of the cutting. There will still be raking up to do, but I tell volunteers that's the best exercise as you get older!