Boring

and so was the weather. Cold, snow flurries, easterly breeze, tiny spells of sunshine.

However, always look on the bright side of life: the weather forecast today for the rest of the week is very positive. Will be dry, Tuesday/Wednesday still cool but sunshine and then it soars to over 20°C by Friday.

Easterly cold breeze does have the advantage of drying out the ground.

Took a walk up the slope in the forest to look from the opposite side how the trees had faired. After the 20-25 tree group around our house there is 100 meters or so with cleared ground before the forest starts again. At the top end only a few trees have gone over. Our section is by far the worse but no surprise given the lack of wind protection and the very boggy ground, wholly unsuitable for spruce.

The track is a logging path and so as opposed to all normal tracks, is not usable by ordinary people. In Germany generally but even more so in Bavaria, the law allows public access to all forests, lakes, mountains and fields. It's as good as impossible to put up a fence in any forest, whether state or private owned. We as riders can for instance ride over any grass fields during the non vegetation time or over a harvested grain field before it is ploughed. However in the forest, one is required to keep to the tracks. So the logging path is strictly closed to us but we have been allowed to use it. In 2002 we could drive with our carriages up this path but over the years it has been ruined by harvesters. We can't complain officially and the forester who also has the hunting rights in this case, is not overly motivated to improve things as he would rather we didn't disturb his shooting! He can't accept that the deer ignore us when out riding and even graze on our fields with the horses in summer.

TUESDAY FOOTNOTE

To get this subject dealt with: Angie phoned the forestry office in the early morning and I got a call from the responsible forester that he would be sending the boys around in the afternoon. Indeed they arrived and did the very minimum which in the circumstances is what one would expect. The trees on our side of the fence are now no longer attached to the roots so no chance of them "springing back", the hanging trees are apparently OK for the time being and no one can accuse of us doing anything to their "property". The forester had said we could have the wood on our side but naturally there is an awful lot of unusable material, the branches only being at the top. One has to balance out the situation and especially here in the country other rules apply than one would use in a town. Give & take. - we need access to the forest. So we will end up clearing it away ourselves and hope the forester makes sure the logging track down to our property is made useable again. The forester said a tracked, rather than wheeled, harvester was due to arrive here within the week and depending on the workload should  clear away our section in the next 10-14 days.

We will now register the damage to our insurance company and see if there is anything to be done in terms of the fencing and foundations.