Another Two-fer

By the session leaders:

A common feature of our sessions is that there are alternative tasks from which our volunteers can choose, depending on what kind of work they personally prefer – or what kind of footwear they are sporting.

Alternative #1: weir-removal 

This sounded more dramatic than it proved, for this was only a small weir, on a shallow stream.  Removing it (from under the bridge) was to enable fish – mostly trout – to get up stream.   It was a remarkably speedy job, and the water level above the bridge dropped very quickly – note the muddy banks:

Here is the demolished weir – a marvelous oak plank:

Snowdrops in the middle of March still? 

Alternative #2: willow-pollarding

The crew turned up with fire-lighting kit just in case, but in fact the fire was already going when most of us arrived, well before our RV time:

Most (but not all) of the willow on site was to be pollarded.

It is so ingrained in Green-Gymmers that we sort and stack timber that when the whole group convened at the picnic table for tea we found that the group which was pollarding in that section of the site had done this:

They had also restored a garden feature:

And this is job done in the meadow area.  The large willow to the right in the photograph was deliberately left as it was – we were told “not to touch!”