By the session leader:
Our skills
at creating and maintaining dead-hedge fences have improved over the years. Today’s site was the one at which we have had
most practice.
It promised
to be a nice, dry, bright day, and we looked forward to seeing how our previous
years’ hedges had faired. Some
volunteers simply discounted reports that one section had “fallen over.” Some were stolidly convinced that it could
not have been a section we had constructed, which had failed. Others of us were crossing our fingers and
hoping.
The section
concerned had been one of our earliest attempts at dead-hedge fencing. It was still holding, and doing its job; but had
sagged badly on one side – beside the public footpath – and was looking very sad:
The good
news (from our PoV) was that it was not the bits we had constructed, which had
failed, but the original chestnut-paling stakes, which we had incorporated into
the design for the new dead-hedge fence.
With a good turnout today, and a
coordinated team effort, we got the fence back upright again:
We couldn’t
stand there for ever holding it up, so we decided that it needed partial
dismantling and more stakes driven in on both sides.
No this is
not a murder attempt …
just one of
the many stakes being supported by one brave volunteer while another drives it
home.
After coffee,
two of the team continued reinforcing the hedge by wiring together stakes from
opposite sides to give mutual support.
There was a certain make-and-mend aspect to this, as the wire was all scavenged
from elsewhere on site, where previous work parties (not us!) had left behind strands
of redundant wire.
The rest of
the team toured the other side of the Abbey grounds to check on what else could
be done. On the way we came across this
beautiful spring display of daffodils …
or rather
what would be a beautiful spring display of daffodils if drooping bushes and
brash were not trying to smother it. The
whole area needed to be seriously tidied up:
To our
delight the dead hedge on the road side was as solid as a rock, well not
literally. Just as well, as that is the
hedge seen by all the drivers and walkers that traverse the village.
Then at the
end we returned to search for the missing two members of the team that we
thought might have been taking it easy – only to find that they had completed
yet another task, levelling an area of ground that had dips and trip hazards.
A pleasant
day, and satisfying in that we completed all the tasks requested: more than had
been expected. An extra bonus for some
volunteers – unfortunately not including the photographer – was coming across
three deer. After much deliberation, it
was decided that although in the same sector, the animals were different
species: the small one, probably muntjac; the other two, roe deer.
