No 1 ... Aerial Photos of Old lodge from the 1990s ... No 1.

Mike Parcell has a series of photos, 19 in all, which will be of interest to volunteers and others.  I have scanned them and will display them one per page in the blog.

You will be able to download them if you wish.  Normally if you right click on the photo, you will get a drop down list which includes something like "Save image as ...".  Click on this and you will be prompted for a file name and folder on your computer.  Then you can tinker with it at your hearts content with something like picasa.

I will add comments and locations over the next few days.

I am trying to reproduce these images with current maps from Google.  I will attach some kmz files which people can download, and on their own PC double click to view.  This will require you to have Google Earth installed, and a little expertise in tilting the image.  basically shift + left mouse button + move around until right.  Plus maybe a zoom in or out.  Alternatively if you just double click you will get a simple Google maps version

martin

South Heath looking north west

The equivalent Google map is South Heath 2.kmz

The Google earth image is as follows

                               Copyright:   (c)  Google

                               Attribution:  Google earth

a couple of ditch arrangements at the bottom east of south heath, one semi-circular and attached to it on the right hand side, is another one, being more of an inverted v.  These would keep the enclosed land drier by diverting any water flow down the channels.

the sewage outflow is clearly visible as a green patch in the centre.

No obvious evidence of the fence between the South Heath and OL1.

No horse trough?  No significant birches in the quarry there.

Some shadows indicating time is midday roughly, but reasonably long shadows on the down hill side of the valley. How about spring time?  Birch trees are barely visible, and bracken still brown and grass very pale straw.

There is amazingly little gorse on SH, with just a little west of the entrance gate in the centre of the photo along the road.  Surprised me given the size of some of the specimens we have recently been coppicing.  I assume that there were plenty of plants ready to shoot up, after some scrapping or mowing.  There are signs of very small plants perhaps to the east of the gate, a little away from the road.

The willow tree in the ditch and the remains of the old pumping station are just visible on the right.

Nowadays there is some evergreen grass around the semicircle ditches, which is not visible here.

There look to be signs of mowing along the south boundary of SH.

You can just see the fence post line of south heath along the road, or rather a chunk in from the road, as it was before the re-fencing say 5 years ago.  Also the track that used to run from the gate there down and across south heath and OL1 to join the track running along the boundary ditch.  I think this was called Pine avenue.

The block of pine to the north east of beeches avenue looks remarkably dense.

You can see the power line across the middle of the reserve.


Martin