Repairs and Maintenance

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.