Fun in the early-spring sun?

By C:

One way of consoling oneself for not being able to get to a Green-Gym session is to think that it didn’t look as if it was going to be particularly good that week.

Unfortunately (for me: but fortunately for those able to attend), today’s session looked like it could be a lot of fun in the late-winter sunshine, as well as good exercise.  This from the session leader’s invitation:

• Plenty of work and plenty of ‘lopping and sawing’.   (Site warden didn’t mention a fire.)
• Plenty of water so wellies will be needed.  Thames is well over the banks here.
• Forecast is cold for next week so plenty of clothes too.

That the level of the river in Wallingford was high the day the notice for Green-Gym landed in my Inbox, I can vouch for:

River Thames seen from Wallingford Bridge: looking upstream

View downstream

How green will I feel when I hear the session turned out to be every bit as fantabulous as anticipated?  (Though it probably won’t have been as exciting as tree removal the industrial way.)

From the session leader:

A bright frosty start …

to what turned out to be a lovely day. 

Our engineer Green-Gymmmer started by revealing a new heavy cart for the nature reserve.  He had made it entirely from recycled parts, showing that WGG has more than just countryside skills:

And he then put it to the test:

The main task for today was clearing fallen trees from neighbouring land …

and carrying the mountain of brash back to the fire site …

by various methods …

to where the fire-raisers had been busy:

Another team was busy erecting fence posts ready for a willow screen to give the sand martins and their families some privacy.   Note the essential hard hats:

By the end a good fire was going:

For the nature-reserve records, site staff took a photo of the whole group against the sand martins’ home, which many of us had helped to build: