“Reed-fen clearance by hand” was the main element of the plan for today. It seemed an unusual mission.
When I first read that in our brief, I had a
vision of a line of Green-Gymmers tooled up with scythes. Nothing so exotic, however! The explanation continued that we would be
taking out small willows and cutting the vegetation in those places where site
staff had cut as much they could by machine – “we kept getting stuck / hitting
logs and trees”. So it would be
over to us with bow-saws, loppers, shears, and – when it came to removing old
log piles for use in a new beetle habitat/sculpture – our bare hands. Well no, not actually bare hands:
gloved/gauntleted hands. Especially with
it being ‘C’ down to lead again (the H&S “extremely overzealous” one, as a visiting
researcher put it).
For those who didn’t fancy trudging around a
reed fen, there were to be the more homely tasks of running a bonfire, and
rejuvenating/maintaining outdoor furniture – sanding, mending, and painting.
For the refreshment of all workers, there
were treats brought from overseas for tea-break: pain d’épice pur miel from Limoges; and pâtes de fruits – or rather ‘fruit dainties’ since these
particular ones were from South Africa.
That was the plan.
Then came the phone call: sadly, session
cancelled. On account of the car-park
being out of service.
This was disappointing, of course, but not
altogether a surprise. For last time we
were there, the area was over-run by contractors working on things which were
nothing to do with the nature reserve, but entailed vans and heavy equipment causing
something of an obstruction on the access lane, and taking up a goodly part of
the parking area.
Ah well, these things happen. Treats to be consumed next week instead. And actually, it was a bit of a lucky let-off
for us volunteers: the forecast was for heavy rain.
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