Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Okehampton

Okehampton sits where the two Okements meet with the high moor rising immediately to the south, and the growth reflects it. Gorse on the rough edges, bracken on the slopes and coarse moorland grass everywhere else, none of which a domestic strimmer will touch.

Gorse in particular is a job of its own. It is woody, it is armed, and cutting it means working from the outside in with a blade and dragging every armful clear before the next can be reached. It is slow, satisfying work and it is priced by the hour like everything else.

Away from the granite and slate town centre, the ground opens quickly into moorland farms, longhouses and scattered properties with far more land than a garden. Boundary work here is measured in hundreds of metres, and the useful unit is the day rather than the hour.

A day gets a long run of bank face and margin done, and what is realistic is agreed before the machine starts rather than guessed at. Arisings are left where they fall unless there is a reason not to.

Dartmoor forces Atlantic air upwards right on the doorstep, and Okehampton is one of the wettest and windiest places covered. Rainfall is high, driving rain is frequent, and ground stays wet for long periods at a time.

The practical effect is a short cutting window and a real chance of a date moving. Growth is also correspondingly vigorous, so a boundary cut once a year here will look untouched again by the following August.

This is towards the outer edge of the twenty mile radius, which makes a difference to what is worth booking. A two hour minimum job here is a poor use of everybody's morning; a half day or a full day is what makes the trip worth making, and it is priced the same as anywhere else.

The castle, the viaduct and the national park boundary are the usual landmarks people use, and any of them alongside an EX20 postcode is enough to place a job for an estimate.

The disused railway and the Granite Way running west out of the town carry a long, sheltered corridor of growth, and properties backing onto it get bramble and scrub coming over the boundary every year without fail.

Those boundaries are cut back to the line and the material dragged onto your own side, which is the rule everywhere but matters more where the other side of the fence is not a neighbour but a right of way.

Because it is a longer run out here, the day is planned properly rather than squeezed in, and where two neighbouring properties both need work it is worth asking whether they can share a visit.