Roll out the wire

Is it because it’s July that our numbers were down this week?  And that there was an unusually high proportion of men to women?

If Green-Gymmers were the desponding type, a volunteer present might have moped about those who’d said they didn’t need us this week (but I love my clown more than you know).  Green-Gymmers, however, are known for not being the desponding type.   

(In any case, volunteers are all perfectly entitled to have other things to do besides turning out to Green Gym.)

Last time we were at this site, we had picked up from where a previous team had left off from working on making a deer-exclosure.  That we were the ones who got to continue from where we in turn had left off, came as a bit of a surprise, but a welcome one:

Rolling out the “rabbit wire”, which is to stop muntjac deer

This was more or less the opposite of what a couple of Green-Gymmers had been up to during the week.  They had been so looking forward to a job they would have done had the previous WGG session not been re-located that they arranged with the site warden to go there independently and, with help from another volunteer who works there, get it done ‘out of hours’.  Their report was concise.  I quote in full:

Here it is.  No, it isn’t.  It’s here.

There were in fact a couple of destructive tasks to be done today besides construction of the deer exclosure.  First there was an old exclosure fence to be taken down – very carefully, so that the materials could be re-used (rolling up the rabbit wire again).  Before and after pictures for that are, I admit, not that impressive:

If you look very carefully among the verdant growth which is the living proof that the fence had served its purpose, you can just make out the old fence posts which will be left in place, now that the chestnut paling and chicken-wire have been removed.

The new fence, meanwhile, is much more photogenic:

All this was accomplished so quickly that the site warden was completely taken aback that we were finished already.  This was a situation which definitely called for an early tea-break.  As it happens, it also gave us more of a chance to chat with our visitor: an ex-Green-Gymmer who had come all the way back from Australia to see us (and a few other friends).

In the second half of the session, some of us moved the recycled materials down to the yard, by hand.  Others were engaged on cutting back vegetation from the ride.  This took us along pathways which were new to us, and really quite attractive despite the fact that by now it was raining:

There was the occasional glimpse of a view:

And no-one could reasonably complain that the route was not clearly waymarked:

Most Green-Gymmers stopped at this junction, which seemed to lie at a border …

complete with antique National Trust sign:

If one carried on a little further, one came to the road, and several signs indicating ‘discovery trails’, of which this was the most interesting:

One such trail was marked out by a WGG team some years ago, but not, I think, that one.

The weather remained uncertain for most of the morning, but the temperature held up.  And this was the sole casualty of the morning: