Lady Celia Congreve wrote a lovely little poem about the qualities of different types of firewood. ('The Firewood Poem')

We had a big log fire in our last house, and found that oak took ages to light and was better put on top of other woods already glowing.

Pine and other evergreens have a lot of resin in, which coats the inside of the chimney then ignites and causes a chimney fire.

Fruit woods (apple, cherry etc) spit and crackle, but smell nice.

With the onslaught of Dutch elm disease, we had lots of felled elms in our area, and the logs were plentiful. It burned quite well.

But as Lady Celia said, ash is the best of all. Ignites readily, burns steadily and not too fast.

All our neighbours have wood-burning stoves and no radiators. Tractors are zooming up and down the village at the moment pulling trailers loaded up with sawn logs. We have an oil tank and an oil boiler, as we prefer radiators in every room!