All posts by Peter Fonseca

Sealed Knot – Civil War in BBCW!!

There will be a small marching camp, depicting a small group of English civil war soldiers gathering on their way to join the main army of the King near Bristol !!

This is a chance to see some of the equipment and weapons of the time, and some of the soldier’s pastimes – from repairing kit, to camp cooking and games of chance. The camp will be ‘open’ at the fire circle up in the wood between 12noon and 4pm on the Saturday, with anyone welcome to join us.

Click here to find out more…

2017 Calendar

We have our 2017 calendar now available at £6.50 each.

If you want to buy one, they are available from the Bush Inn (Upper Cwmbran), Davies Timber or order one online here and we’ll arrange how we can get them to you.

All proceeds will go towards projects in our much loved woodland.

Next volunteer day – Sunday 22nd May

A reminder that we are looking for volunteers (new and old) to join us this Sunday morning. Meeting at the log circle at 10.00am.

Virtually all the roads for Sunday are closed off due to that Velothon thing, so why not try helping a local charity owned community woodland out as a family day out. Come up and see what Blaen Bran has to offer – especially if you’ve not been there before! You are allowed to bring picnics with you and we have the resources to make a woodland coffee or two!

Families are welcome – there are many tasks that can be done by young and old and we love teaching woodland management skills to everyone!! We wont be able to fulfill the 900 year lease with our current committee so we need some young people appreciating the community woodland now and show them the work that goes into maintaining it so they can help when they’re older. When the current volunteers are on mobility scooters in 10 years the woodland might disappear forever and become a housing estate because we haven’t maintained the land to the required standard on our lease…

We love all volunteers, even those who can only help us for 10 minutes whilst walking your dog, as it allows our more committed volunteers who may have been helping for hours to have a break!

Please wear appropriate footwear (boots or wellies), sensible clothing and keep an eye on the weather forecast. Any safety equipment, such as gloves and safety glasses, will be provided depending on the tasks you are doing.

Children will have to be accompanied by an appropriate adult.

Planting Day

We have a lot of trees to plant and would appreciate lots of volunteers to come up and help to do it… All ages, family groups and pets are welcome – we’ll find a job for most people – and if your pet’s a good digger we’ll get them doing some too 🙂 !

These trees and hedges will last for decades, so isn’t it be a nice thought that when you are walking in the woodland years from now, that you and your family could have the satisfaction that you planted an area of it!

The event is being arranged for Sunday 28th February. For more details look at this calendar post.

Thanks in advance!!

BBCW and Friends of the Earth Social Evening

FotE-BBCW Social 1Blaen Bran Community Woodland and the Friends of the Earth are holding a social evening on Monday 29th February 2016 at 7.30pm at the Bush Inn, Upper Cwmbran. It’s in our events calendar here.

There will be a mix of different quizzes and games (general knowledge quiz, music quiz, hoy bingo, dingbats, anagrams, and some other stuff we will come up with 🙂 ) which will be 50p/person a go. There is a ticket price of £5 to attend (which has not been affected by inflation since Oct 2014!!) which covers a roll and chips plus a free game (plus undefinable atmosphere, of course!)

Tickets will be available at the Bush Inn later this week (or contact us to reserve some) – encourage your friends to come along and support these worthy causes!

History Trail Walk

We will be holding a walk around the woodland in mid-March which will let you find out some information about the the history of the woodland.

Around the Mynedd Maen mountain area which our woodland is on, there has been evidence of settlements back to the Iron Age. Caerleon was close too which was a major Roman fort, and evidence has been found that the Romans were mining coal – and the farming of animals to provide food for the fort was here too.

You don’t realise the history on your doorstep sometimes, so come along and find out!

When the date is confirmed it will be put in the events calendar.

2016 BBCW Calendar Still Available

If you would like a 2016 Blaen Bran calendar with some lovely photos there are still some left. Obviously we dont really want to bin them and would appreciate some advertising locally, so if you are interested in having one let us know here.
A donation of your choosing towards the woodland would be appreciated, but is not necessary if you can collect it from Cwmbran. All proceeds will go towards projects in our much loved woodland.

Blaen Br

There has been an awful lot going on in the woodland in the last two years – new tracks, ponds, tree felling, tree planting. We thought it would be a good idea if we held a series of walks showing what has been done, why it has been done, what our future plans are and, most important of all, get your views on these matters.

The first of these walks will take place on Saturday December 8th, meeting at the new car park at 10.30 am. It is expected the walk will take approximately one hour. We look forward to seeing you there