Nature

Melwood - Your Local Nature Reserve Winter Senescence?

The trees are now all bare branches but the leaves which have fallen will provide important nutrients for the next generation of plants in the wood. We therefore leave the leaf cover generally undisturbed – just brush, cutting the verges of the paths and raking the cuttings to provide additional mulch for the more sheltered areas in the wood. This also provides a protective covering for the young shoots in the spring and a good habitat for insects which sit towards the bottom of the food chain, and are therefore important for all the animals living in and visiting the wood.

Bird visitors will have arrived and settled in for their winter stay. They will then return north in the late spring. We hope that the home population will use the nest boxes which have been cleaned out for them during the winter.

Dead wood from fallen branches and dead trees is also an important component of the forest cycle of decay and regeneration. Up to a fifth of woodland species rely on dead or dying wood for all or part of their life-cycle. Dead wood also plays a part in mitigating the effects of climate change by acting as a medium-term sink for carbon. Over the long term dead wood should amount to roughly 20m3 per hectare. We therefore follow the dead wood management guidelines published by the Forestry Commission in dealing with death wood in Melwood. However, there is always a balance to be struck between producing an optimal conservation environment and ensuring the wood can be enjoyed by a variety of individuals, including children, regularly using the space. We try and ensure that no dead or dying wood is a danger to the visitors or spoils the visual aspects of the site. We therefore regularly inspect the wood after serious storms and take appropriate action if there are any trees or branches which might fall and injure someone.

There is also another tricky balance between the ultimate conservation value of dead wood and the shorter-term risks of providing resources for damaging bark and wood-boring insects and fungal pathogens. In our wood the risks of serious damage from insects or pathogens is small, although we recently monitored the wood for the presence of ash die back, which thankfully did not take hold.

The wood has been grateful for volunteers since its ‘adoption’. Through the local history group, we have recently come across accounts of guides, scouts and brownies involved in helping in the wood. There was an initiative by the guides when Sheila Payne was the Guide Guider at the time (she later changed her name back to Bishop). In the late 1980s the Guide movement started an initiative to encourage girls to be involved in caring for parts of their community and environment. The name of the project was ‘Adopt and Cherish’, the idea being that Guides would not just do something to enhance their local environment, but would take responsibility for maintaining whatever it was that they did. Most of the work in Melwood was focused on planting daffodils –The ‘cherish’ part of the challenge was to keep the area litter-free. Unfortunately, we no longer have any Guides, Brownies or Scouts involved but we have maintained a group of volunteer litter pickers. There has also been a team of Duke of Edinburgh Award students from Melbourn Village College keeping the flower tubs at Meldreth Station watered during this very dry summer. So the spirit of volunteering is still strong in the young.

Sadly, the photograph below also had a newspaper report describing vandalism in the wood in 1982 involving the work of the scouts and guides. A log table made by the scouts was damaged and some of the daffodils that had been planted were uprooted. Pieces of wood from the table were found floating in the river. Thankfully we have not had any serious vandalism in recent years following an initiative from the Melwood Conservation Group working with Melbourn Village Collage and the youth club to encourage an understanding that the wood is there to enjoy but also respect.

We have a small team of enthusiastic volunteers, but we always welcome more. If anyone is interested in helping to preserve this local habitat, please contact Graham Borgonon on 01763 260358 or Jim Reid on 260231.

Royston Crow

Royston Crow

Goalball and Cam Sight in Melbourn! In early October, Warren Wilson from Cam Sight – and with extended family from Melbourn! – gave dazzling assemblies about the Paralympic sport of goalball at Melbourn Primary School and Melbourn Village College. Students and staff at the College participated in a lunchtime goalball tournament which had everyone running around learning a new sport and new perspectives, with lots of fun and laugher. On the day, MVC students raised a generous contribution to help cover the cost of Cam Sight’s Christmas get-together at the Vicarage Close Community Centre on December 7th. This invaluable service provides practical and social support to people living with blindness and visual impairment – please get in touch if you or someone you know would benefit from coming along and this can easily be arranged. Meldreth, Shepreth and Foxton Rail User Group December 14 meeting: This will be at the Elin Way Meldreth Community Room, with mince pies at 7:00 and the meeting running from 7:309:00. Everyone is welcome! You can find out more about our rail campaign at meldrethsheprethfoxton.org.uk. Drop-in advice surgery: every first Monday of the month, 2:30-3:30. Susan van de Ven, Tel 07905325574, Susanvandeven5@gmail.com.

Cambridgeshire Alliance for Independent Living

Do you want to have a say in improving services from Health or Social Care?

Cambridgeshire Alliance for Independent Living is a local independent charity that works to improve services by raising the voice of people living with all disabilities.

One of the ways we do this is by bringing people with all disabilities and carers (called Independent Members), Health and Social Care teams, and voluntary sector organisations (such as Age UK, Voice Ability, Cam Sight and the Carer’s Trust) together at ‘Partnership Board’ meetings.

The Partnership Boards are opportunities for you to have your say about what is good about Health and Social Care services, such as home care and day centres, and what you would like to improve or where you would like to see changes. Recent activities by the Partnership Boards include raising concerns about Home Care, which are now being examined closely by the County Council, involvement in helping to develop a new Carers Strategy and involvement in the process for choosing organisations to run Carers Services.

Interested in getting involved? We are looking for new Independent Members to join our boards. We offer full training and support, out of pocket expenses and reimbursement of travel. If you think this could be you, please contact Leisha O’Brien, Development Officer at Cambridgeshire Alliance for Independent Living by phoning 0300 111 2301 or email leisha@ cambridgeshirealliance.org.uk

To find out more, take a look at Partnership Board pages on our website www.cambridgeshirealliance.org.uk

How The Cambridge supports your community

Charity of the Month Cash for the Community

Community Magazine Awards

Find out more about the work we do at cambridgebs.co.uk/community

Volunteering

THE CAMBRIDGE

Building Society

Head Offi ce, PO Box 232 51 Newmarket Road, Cambridge CB5 8FF thecambridge@cambridgebs.co.uk

Relate Cambridge’s Christmas cake recipe

(Including ingredients for healthier relationships)

Ingredients 200g / 7oz Commitment

(butter) 200g /7oz Intimacy (dark brown sugar) 4 x Trust, honesty, openness, sharing (free range eggs, lightly mixed) 225g /8oz Understanding (plain flour) ½ tsp Realistic expectations (mixed spice) ¼ tsp Patience (salt) ½ tsp Tolerance (ground cinnamon) 2 tbsp Fun (black treacle) 1 tbsp Self-awareness (marmalade) ¼ tsp Space in your togetherness (vanilla essence) 800g / 1¾lb Compassion (mixed dried fruits) 100g / 3½oz Empathy (chopped mixed peel) 150g / 5oz Respect for other and self (glacé cherries, halved) 100g / 3½oz Good communication (blanched almonds, chopped) Offering and giving support (brandy)

To Decorate 200g/7oz Passion (marzipan) 1-2 tbsp Emotional management (apricot jam, warmed) For the ‘icing on the cake’ 3 free-range Sharing the load (egg whites) 600g / 1lb 5oz Kindness (icing sugar, sieved) 1½ tsp Sense of humour (liquid glycerine – optional) 1 tbsp Compromise (lemon juice)

Method Heat the oven to 150C/300F/Gas2. Grease a 20cm/8inch round or an 18cm/7inch square cake tin and line the bottom and sides with baking parchment. • Sieve the flour, salt, mixed spice and cinnamon into a bowl. • Mix the eggs a little at a time (with love) into the mixture, adding a tablespoon of flour mixture with the last amount. • Fold in the remaining flour mixture until well mixed and then mix in the dried fruit, mixed peel, glace cherries and the almonds. • Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and make a slight hollow in the centre (preferably heart-shaped). • Bake in the oven for 3 hours and then test with a skewer. If not ready bake for up to another hour testing every 20 minutes until the skewer comes out clean. • Turn out on to a wire rack and leave to cool. • Once cool, make a few holes in the cake with a skewer and pour over 3–4 tbsp of brandy. Let the brandy soak into the cake. • Store the cake wrapped in foil and in an airtight tin or plastic container, holes side up. • OPTIONAL: For a rich and moist cake, spoon over a few tablespoons of brandy every week until you are ready to ice and decorate your cake. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: enjoy all the ingredients coming together for the happiest Christmas!

To find out more or make a booking please ring 01302 347712. Relate Cambridge offers information, advice and counselling for all stages of your relationships at our outpost in Melbourn. The sessions are held in the small meeting room at Melbourn hub on Wednesday each week.

Appointment times are: 10:30; 11:45; 13:00. For more information or to book an appointment, contact Relate Cambridge on 01223 357424 Mon-Thurs 8am–10pm, Fri 8 am–6pm, Sat 9am–5pm (confidential answerphone at all other times) or visit www.relatecambridge.org.uk Relate Cambridge – supporting relationships at every stage of your life

Home-Start

Snowflake Tea Parties – could you help raise funds for Home-Start by hosting a tea party with your family and friends from your office, playgroup, school, book club etc.?

We will supply you with a ‘tea bag’ fundraising pack with ideas for all you need to host an event. The pack includes: invites for your use, a snowflake cutter and recipes for any cakes or biscuits you may want to make for your event.

If you want to host a tea party, please call our office on 01763 262262 or email admin@hsrsc.org.uk The Snowflake Appeal: An appeal to individuals, companies and communities to raise funds to help Home-Start support vulnerable children. Concept of the appeal: Home-Start is asking people to raise money to support vulnerable children who are unique and fragile as snowflakes.

This ties in with Home-Start’s unique, tailor-made support for children, delivered with parents, in the family’s home.

The appeal runs from 1st November – 31st January each year. “Please join me raising money for The Snowflake Appeal so Home-Start can keep supporting unique and fragile children. Home-Start is in there, making a difference each and every day. It is changing all our communities for the future. It prevents parents’ difficulties from becoming their children’s problems”.

Kirstie Allsopp, TV presenter, mum, stepmum, Home-Start ambassador