2025 Bluebell Walk preparations

We have identified 24 Duty Charities who will welcome our visitors, serve them with delicious food, collect the entrance monies and ensure everything is kept clean and tidy, especially the loos! Two are brand new charities, selected from our ever-growing waiting list. It is always a difficult decision in deciding which charities to use from this list, as they are all so enthusiastic, but we have to be assured that they have sufficient volunteers to give the good service that our visitors expect. Since 1972 I note that 89 individual charities have been involved and benefited from the £1,061,654 raised to date, before inflation is factored in. No wonder each year we get approached by about half a dozen new charities!

Most charities have attended our Refresher Meetings to advise them what will be new for 2025. It is always difficult to arrange convenient dates with the supervisors of all the charities, being such busy people, but we are getting there! The idea I mentioned last month of producing what we now call ‘Guidance Notes’, which will be hanging on hooks alongside where the respective volunteers are based, were universally accepted as a helpful step forward. The Plant Barn is scheduled to be paved, with the path to the Food Hatch highlighted, plus various improvements to the kitchen area. There will also be an extra till and card machine allowing orders for hot food and sandwiches to be made and paid for at the same time, reducing pressure on the main food till. Regular visitors will notice these minor changes, but there may not be many to add for 2026!

Fungi in Beatons Wood

On a wonderful sunny and warm autumn day with no wind, we invited over forty of Friends of the Bluebell Walk & Bates Green Garden plus others who had helped us during the year, to our afternoon tea celebration, marking the last day BGG was open for 2024. We arranged a walk in Beatons Wood led by Ted Tuddenham, a member of the Sussex Fungus Group, and he found in an hour an astonishing number of different fungi. The interest was so great that next year we will arrange a far longer tour, to do justice to the variety of fungi that abound in our ancient oak wood.

Sarah Wilesmith, an outdoor education provider, has for the past ten years regularly taken young children with their parents into Beatons Wood, introducing them to the woodland wildlife. Sarah has been on several fungi forays this year and her report can be found here.