We are excited to share that this Saturday 12th August we’ll have two talented chainsaw carvers working onsite at Gillies Hill Community Woodland.
This will be to start work on our carving project where our drey tree stumps will be transformed into amazing designs as voted for by local primary school pupils.
We’d welcome everyone within the community to take a walk up and watch them in action as it’ll be fascinating to see the carvings being completed.
If you enter the woods at the Gillies Hill sheds entrance most stumps are near the main path straight up from that or across to the primary school. All will be accessed within 10 minutes walk from entering the woodland.
Before the schools closed for summer holidays Cambusbarron Primary School and Borestone Primary School pupils voted for their favourite woodland animals/birds which they would like to see carved. We also asked them to put their thinking caps on and suggest other ideas too!
The most popular ideas across both schools were: Red squirrel, pine marten, badger, birds (owls in particular but also jay, robin or sparrowhawk) and frog/toad.
Additional ideas that came forward were small seats/toadstools to create a story circle around mythical / fairy theme (fairy, dragons, trolls, unicorns) and a throne for the storyteller. We’ve also suggested incorporating some of our beautiful woodland flowers – bluebells, wood sorrel, foxgloves into the carvings too. We’re excited to see these ideas become reality!
It’s important to ensure that we reach out to engage with our youngest woodland users and that they feel part of the community woodland to love and look after it as they grow up too. Thank you to those that took part in ideas for this project and we look forward to getting pupils and teachers more involved in future too.
This Saturday will hopefully be the first of two days of carving to be carried out this year – weather depending! Safety restrictions around the immediate area of work will be in place while carving is ongoing for the safety of woodland users and the carvers. We’ll update you all once we know the second date too.
Our carvers Pete Bowsher ‘Chainsaw Pete’ and Craig ‘Steeley’ Steele are both well known faces at Shows across Scotland demonstrating the art of their chainsaw skills. Both carvers have competed many times at Carve Carrbridge the national gathering for chainsaw carvers held annually in Carrbridge, near Aviemore. Pete has competed for the Claymore Trophy 15 times and won on 8 occasions.
