Both of these pieces were written as social media posts for Devon Rural Skills Trust. They are of their moment, and I hope they haven’t dated too quickly; what additions I have made are in square brackets (and my apologies for the repetition). The first site was on a hilltop near Ivybridge, south Devon, with glorious views and the traffic-hum of the A-38 ever present. At the second, beside the Dart estuary, also in south Devon, there were barely any background sounds other than us working. It was like being teleported into an earlier century…
1 October
Good to be able to hold our annual hedgelaying competition again after a two-year hiatus. And what a day we had. The cooling northerly breeze was offset by occasional spells of warm sunshine, the rain held off, we had plenty of competitors, plenty of visitors, and the finished hedge is a thing of beauty. I have tried to present the pictures in sequence: beginning 
with a tall, tangled line of hazel, hawthorn, blackthorn and wild rose, with a small amount of holly and spindle thrown in [pictured, right] and ending with an elegant Devon-style hedge laid the customary way on top of a bank, by some of the best hedgelayers in the business [see featured image]. The pictures, by the way, don’t do justice to the wonderful views. Thanks to everybody who came along and did such a good job and thanks too to David and Jane, of Hillhead Farm, Ugborough, near Ivybridge, who let us loose on their hedge. The Collier and Co jug [a 19th Century Plymouth wine and spirit merchant], which turned up in one section, was broken and contained nothing; given the work involved I’m sure some of the competitors could have done with it being full.
22 October
A lovely bit of hedge on Saturday and a fab site, on a hillside above the silvery-grey estuary of the river Dart. We had a good turnout, 18 of us in all, and we laid about 40 yards of hedge, all of it growing on top of a formidable stone-faced bank. In Devon, it is the bank and the shrubby trees laid on the top that together form the barrier. The section I was working on was a tangle of hazel, dogwood, blackthorn, wild rose, with a little bit of spindle and hawthorn thrown in – what variety can be found in a short length of hedge! That species composition was repeated throughout, with a lone ash left as a standing tree in one place, which, alas, may well succumb to dieback before too long. One very short part of the hedge had a busy wasp’s nest and we left it well alone; a knotty little bit at the bottom will have to wait for another day too. Thanks to everybody involved, who did some lovely work, at Old Vicarage Farm, Stoke Gabriel, on a warm autumn day that wasn’t ruined by the occasional rain showers. At one point I heard the haunting call of a curlew from the estuary below, and as we finished we could hear the low-pitched honking of geese as a skein of the birds passed by, tracking the nearby river’s course. Two avian reminders that we are on the cusp of winter.