Tree surgeons in Perranporth and the Perrancoombe valley

Perran Sands and the dunes behind them are one of the biggest sand systems in Cornwall, and the holiday park, the chalets and the houses along the cliff at Droskyn and towards Cligga Head live in the wind. Trees are few: pines and sycamores planted for shelter around the park and the older houses, tamarisk and escallonia doing the job of trees along the front. What there is has shallow roots in sand and goes over whole in a gale, and our work on the dune side is reducing the sail of what is standing, clearing what has fallen and lifting the root plates out with the digger before they take a fence or a chalet corner with them.

Behind the town the Perrancoombe valley runs inland for three miles towards Bolingey, Cocks and Callestick, steep sided, sheltered and full of trees: oak and ash on the slopes, willow and alder along the stream, sycamore everywhere, and the mature gardens of the houses strung along the lane. This is where Perranporth's tree work really is. Storm damage brings trees down across the lane most winters, ash dieback is thinning the ash on the slopes, and the big garden trees over the older houses need the same reductions and dead wooding as anywhere. Access is the challenge: the lane is single track with few passing places, and the lorry has to be planned in and out. For the largest trees the smaller crane earns its keep because it can get where the mobile crane could never go.

Above the valley the ground is old mining country, from Cligga and Wheal Leisure through Perranzabuloe to Goonhavern and the plateau towards Newquay. Spoil heaps and abandoned workings have grown up in gorse, willow and self sown sycamore, and clearing them for paddocks, building or simply to see the view is a regular job, with the checks for shafts, bats and the World Heritage Site that mining land needs. Goonhavern and the villages on the A3075 have the estate planting of the sixties and seventies, now oversized, and the farms have the shelter belts that fail one tree at a time.

The upper valley and the farmland towards Zelah and Callestick is hedge bank and smallholding country, close to the Chiverton roundabout and therefore close to us. Hedge work, boundary trees, windblown trees off tracks and woodland thinning in the valley bottoms are winter work here, and a half day job is worth the trip.

Like every resort on this coast, Perranporth is best worked in the quiet months, when the lane through the valley is passable and the beach car parks are empty enough for a crane to stand in. Emergencies are dealt with whenever they happen. We look at every job first, plan the vehicles for the lane, and the free tree health check covers TR6.