Walking Stinchcombe’s Grassland

There’s been a lot of change up at Stinchcombe this year, with fencing and grazing introduced on the SSSI. But oddly enough, I hadn’t actually walked that part of the common all year. Today was a good opportunity to drive over to Leaf & Ground and walk a nice circular to look at progress. I must admit, I was bowled over to the improvement in the grassland already. The steep slopes had been cut and raked (I guess for the final time) and although I didn’t see them, the cattle have been doing their thing. A couple of years back I helped with some baseline botanical surveys of the area, and I look forward to hopefully doing some again next season to start to record progress. The most impressive part was just past the Tubbs bench where trees had been cut down a couple of years ago and grassland was very much returning. While there were small tree shoots and brambles poking through, you’d hope that the hardy cattle breeds would chomp through and keep that down. It’s been a huge effort by…

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