Newsletter - community involvement

Do you know your elms from your elbow??!

The British Natural History Museum are conducting a survey this year into the whereabouts of any surviving mature elm trees. This data will be fed into their elm map to develop information which may help the elm tree survive in the landscape and also help to examine the role of the elm in maintaining particular wildlife species.

Elm trees are easily recognised by their leaves, which have an asymmetric base. Look at the leaf at the stalk end, one side of the two lobes immediately next to the stalk will be larger than the other. Elm leaves also have a double toothed leaf edge – the main tooth itself has a smaller tooth.

You may be surprised to find that you have some larger elm trees than you imagined in your parish – here's a picture of two fantastic elms found in June this year whilst checking a headland path in Lower Dean to the north of the County. These trees were definitely too big to get my arms all the way around at chest height – a sign it was already there before the 1970's when Dutch Elm disease killed so many trees.

There are two mature elms in the hedgerow in this picture – Do they have resistance to the disease? The elm trees in the foreground certainly didn't!

David Alderman, who runs the County Council Tree Warden Scheme said, 'The northern parishes of Bedfordshire appear to have more surviving elm than elsewhere. Felmersham, Pavenham, Radwell, Riseley, Swineshead, Colmworth, Little Staughton and Keysoe are where you are most likely to find very big and previously un-recorded trees. In the east there are veteran elm in Wrestlingworth and in the west on the Hockliffe Road, Leighton Buzzard. In mid Bedfordshire and the south of the county you will have to look harder but isolated trees may still be found. Where we can obtain permission, cuttings will be taken from selected trees as these may have extra resistance to Elm Disease and therefore be worth planting in the future.

Help increase the Elm Map for Bedfordshire by reporting elm "too big to hug" when walking the footpaths this summer.'

For further information, survey forms and advice on how to recognise elm trees - please contact Ed Burnett|– or if you are on-line – visit the web site Natural History Museum|.

If you have some ideas about planting trees in your parish, the Tree Warden Scheme may be able to help. Contact David Alderman on 01234 228646 or e-mail David Alderman|

Arlesey P3 Ask: Is it all worth it?

Have you sometimes wondered after a hard day's work cutting back the undergrowth along some of your worst footpaths whether it is all worth it, apart from the satisfaction of seeing what you've done. When ACORN decided to produce some circular walk guides to promote the footpaths round Arlesey we also sought funding to produce a web site (Arlesey Walks|) to help promote them as well. Out of the production run of 2000 copies printed to distribute via TIC's and libraries so far 1800 have gone. The question is have they been taken by browsers, as they were free, or walkers. A more precise guesstimate comes from the web site matrix statistical report (whatever that means) which tells us which pages are read, when, where and what walks are downloaded - this being the most useful piece of information as if they are going to follow the walk then they need a copy with them. Derwent May obviously looked at out web site and recommended walk 1 (Glebe Meadow and Old Moat) as a good Boxing Day walk in the Christmas edition of 'The Times'. Pity he didn't look up the train times as well as there was no service on Boxing Day. More recently over 50 Hertfordshire Heart Health walkers did the same walk after reading about it in 'The Times'.

The analysis of the walks for April show walk 2 as the most popular (Mill Pits and Common -1 miles) with walk 8 (Poppy Hill - 4 miles) following closely. May shows Walk 8 as the most popular with walk 2 following closely. The rate of downloading has also increased with 46 increasing to 180 for walk 8. So to summarise I would say that the effort of strimming the footpaths is worthwhile although at this rate of use I think Ed will be looking at footpath erosion and restoration courses in the near future.

Another point I would like to highlight is the work carried out by our Walking4Health leaders, Katie and Brian Juffs, both of whom are ACORN members who regularly maintain the footpaths at this end of the village. They began their walks just over a year ago and now, regularly every Thursday morning, they have about twenty people join them. They mainly use the Arlesey footpaths and this has introduced not only new comers to the village, but even some who have lived here for a number of years, to the lovely countryside around Arlesey. The walkers now know these paths quite well and it is not unusual to meet some of them as we walk in the evenings and weekends. They have also introduced their friends, from all over the place, to the walks so Katie and Brian really are helping to get more people out enjoying the countryside.