I've just spent the week up in Wales trying to make some headway with the new woodland workshop from which I'll be running chair-making and other green woodwork courses from later this summer.

The site is the Redwood Valley eco-retreat set up and run by my good friends David and Richard Tennant-Eyles. They opened for business last year with two lovely yurts and are currently constructing what promises to be a very special little cabin the woods for guests.

Linked to the yurt camping venture, the plan is also to run green woodwork courses in their 25-acre woodland. The site we've picked for that is in a clearing surrounded by some of the magnificent veteran oak trees found in their woodland. David and I recently built the main structure of the workshop, and I was up there finishing this and building a workbench. There's still plenty to do - a compost loo, build a fire for cooking and drying chair parts, table and seating for course participants... But with spring beginning to stir in the woods and birds finding their voices, it's not so much like hard work.