Local residents and regular visitors to Penyard Woods will have noticed there has been a lot of work carried out over the winter which has involved ‘Thinning’ the forest.

Thinning is the operation of removing a proportion of trees to allow other trees to have space to grow on to maturity and is usually carried out every 5 to 10 years.

Much of the work has been done over the winter months to minimise the impact on people who enjoy the woods for walking and relaxing.

The majority of the work is now complete and the machines will be moved out of the area in a few weeks leaving just a small amount of felling to finish the Chestnut coppice area on the bank facing town.

Some areas have been too steep and wet to work in the winter and will be revisited later in the summer when the work can be completed safely.

Forestry Commission’s Community Ranger, Tamsin Sagar said: “Local people who use the woods have been very understanding of the work we need to do and the team who manage our harvesting operations would like to say thank you.”

Lorries will continue to visit the woods to collect timber over the next few weeks but the cutting will go quiet to allow the banks to dry out.