[JoeSoap]

Originally Posted by retrotecchie

That flamin' spell-checker again 🤣🤣🤣

Yeah, I have a lot of trouble with it too 😂

[Mailman]

I'm a bit shell-shocked today. After storm Agnes breezed through the NE yesterday with little or no damage done outside (even the sunflowers are still just about standing) I felt at relative peace with the world....

That is until I saw, on the luchtime news, reports about the overnight desecration of the iconic tree at 'Sycamore Gap' on Hadrian's Wall. Words fail me.



Now replaced by




😒 'Stop the world I want to get off' is how I feel right now. Police are questioning a 16 year-old !

Sorry to be emotional about a tree and a place I visit. 😒

[WizzyWigg]

Originally Posted by Mailman

I'm a bit shell-shocked today. After storm Agnes breezed through the NE yesterday with little or no damage done outside (even the sunflowers are still just about standing) I felt at relative peace with the world....

That is until I saw, on the luchtime news, reports about the overnight desecration of the iconic tree at 'Sycamore Gap' on Hadrian's Wall. Words fail me.



Now replaced by




😒 'Stop the world I want to get off' is how I feel right now.

Sorry to be emotional about a tree and a place I visit. 😒

Absolutely gob-smacked 😳. What!!!!! Why!!!!😡 You have my sympathy.

Just seen the article on BBC news. What is the world coming to 😡.

[Anasa_EONNext]

@Mailman This is awful! I'm right there with you! What a senseless act! Such a shame there are things like this happening in the world some people sadly have no regard at all to nature very sad 😞

[Tommysgirl]

@Mailman

As a fellow North-Easterner, I feel exactly the same as you. It's an absolute disgrace. If the 16 year old is guilty, he'll get off with few hours Community Service. Sycamores do re-grow, because a neighbour of mine cut theirs right back about 5 years ago, (not quite as severely), and it's back to full strength now, so hopefully it might recover over the next few years.🌳🤞

[retrotecchie]

@Tommysgirl

That's a fairly extreme pruning though...and yes, they grow back as I found with mine, but they send out hundreds of shoots at random, so it takes a lot of care to get them back to looking like a tree again. Mindless vandalism.

[Mailman]

The only thing that makes sense in a perverted kind of way is that this is possibly another one of these tick-tock inspired social media stunts - it also might explain why the police were able to arrest the 16 year old as quickly as they did this morning.

I'm sure that the tree will grow back again in some form from the stump but not in my lifetime or even the perpetrators lifetime.

Carol Malia on Look North (the lead presenter) was visibly upset and angry but she soldiered on like the trooper she is.

[retrotecchie]

@Mailman

Might be nothing whatsoever to do with social media but simply an attempt at blagging a bit of free firewood. Until the full story comes out, we'll never know but I'd certainly be rather concerned. Bad enough that 16 year olds seem to run loose with knives these days, but a teenager out and about with a chainsaw is another level entirely. Despite the possible criminal intent, whatever the motive, one can only hope that he was wearing the appropriate safety gear and had at least some rudimentary training.

It was quite possibly the most photographed tree in Britain and even featured in the film Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves so was world famous.

What next? Some oik taking an angle grinder to that 'crashed Messerschmitt' off the side of the A1?

[DebF_EONNext]

This is sad 😔 This 16yr old would have needed help, it's such a dangerous thing to do too especially if they were alone! Surely though a chainsaw wouldn't get through a big tree like that with such a smooth cut.

[retrotecchie]

@DebF_EONNext

I had two Sycamores felled in my garden last spring. That is exactly what a chainsaw cut looks like. Nice and clean.

But, and there's always a 'but'....

Two horizontal cuts, from the outside on opposite sides meeting in the middle. Not indicative of 'a professional job' as that would have had a wedge cut on the side you want the tree to fall, then a single horizontal cut to meet it. And not much evidence of sawdust chippings either. A trunk that big would leave a lot of dust, unless it got blown away by the wind.

Whoever did it also spray-painted a line around the trunk to indicate the position of the cut. A 'random' vandal...would they have bothered? I'm wondering if someone, with their 'apprentice', was legitimately out early doors doing some arborial work in the area and accidentally cut down the wrong tree?

I seem to remember there was a whole avenue of mature trees cut down somewhere recently (was it Bristol?) which happened in error, but by the time the Council realised the mistake, it was a bit too late!

Sad though this episode is, I sincerely hope that it was an honest mistake rather than a deliberate and malicious act of vandalism. Part of me tries to look for a little hope with the 'human condition' but the more I see on the news these days, that hope is fading fast.

From a purely scientific perspective though, well-seasoned Sycamore is an incredibly good firewood and over the last couple of centuries, it would have sucked about four and a half tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air.