Many thanks for making the time to visit our website & the gallery of images.
The summer has come & gone in what seems like the blink of eye. Firstly, the Celebration of Trees at Capel Manor, this show kick started the year with its traditionally good weather & the first full Students ISA Tree Climbing competition for many years. Sparsholt College ran amuck with David Ward & Tamara Bridge taking the honours with exceedingly high standards. Well done to all. Thanks to all visitors who have supported our efforts in up to date equipment supplies with both positive & negative comments & helpful advice, without which it’s difficult to move forward with adequate knowledge.
The Arboricultural Association Trade Fair; I can’t begin to thank enough people for their consistent support at this event. As many of you know, this is a solid event in the annual calendar for us now & with a massive effort from all quarters everyone seemed to have a great time, even though the weather was set against us. Many thanks to Lars Rodriguez of the company Poel in Holland for their continued support, & for bringing some of the range of Samson products to our customers. We shall in due course be expanding the availability in this range so if you have any specific requirements please contact us to discuss your needs. Special thanks go out to Abbie Bengston who beavered away behind the scenes cooking food & making sure that everyone, including visitors, didn’t go hungry or dry up in the frenetic frontline of the sales area. Best wishes also on the impending life of motherhood, just please don’t get too many rainbow coloured clothes!
Tree Climbing comps have been well covered in the UK arb press so I won’t dwell massively on this. Jon Turnbull, Philippa Allen, Rhys Brace, Josephine Hedger & Stuart Witt took 1st in the team placing at the European champs with John coming in 2nd in the men's & Jo & Philippa coming 2nd & 3rd respectively in the women's event. Stuart & Philippa stepped forward as UK representatives at the ITCC held in Hawaii & come through in 7th & 8th, an awesome feat in anyone’s book I’m sure. Well-done dudes.
This year I decided to support UK TCC’s with the creation of two new trophies that would be presented at the Welsh Open to the male & female who throughout the past season had consistently made stunning performances. The scoring would be based on both preliminary & masters results with the total being divided by the amount of competitions entered. This did not prove to be an easy task as the quality of climbing in the UK in recent years has literally gone through the roof, but leaders did emerge with only a few points separating the top spots. Finally the scores were reckoned & John Turnbull & Philippa Allen collected the Treeworker Trophies, beautifully crafted by local woodwork artists Ian Thompson (female, carving) & Peter Hoad (male, turned platter). Well done to everyone involved with TCC this past year, it is a good place to glean techniques & to experience the exchange of information in a very personal manner without any form of elitism or ‘better than thou’ attitudes. Don’t miss out next year & don’t forget your never too old to be a novice!
The gallery this month is really a mishmash of images I’ve taken through the past 9months. The winter lights at Syon House, West London were truly spectacular & well worth the visit if they run again. Images of New South Wales were created using the autostitcher software that allows panoramic & multi shot images to be put together forming some stunning images that you wouldn’t be able to capture without a sharp scalpel & lots of sellotape. Please contact me if you’re interested in acquiring a copy. An invitation to Kews Gardens from John Hammerton could not be turned down & finally I made time late on a Friday afternoon in August to arrive with our nippers. We all had a brilliant time & as afternoon rolled into the evening a magical stillness came over Kew that we savoured until it was dark. The kids now want to return to have lunch in the badgers sett, which is definitely preferential to the McD’s we had on the way home!
That’s about it folks, once again many thanks for all of your support during the past months & please do let me know if there are products you’d like to see on the site or for that matter if you have any suggestions to make the site more interactive.
Best wishes
Robert Knott ‘Noddy’
