Mudlarks again

By C:

“We are going to have to stop being so good!” replied one of our volunteers when told our mission for today – assigned by the site warden – was:

More of the same, as it was so successful last time.

Enter the human dredger(s):

Phase 1: inserting shovel

Phase 2: lifting

Phase 3: moving sludge to new location

This is the reason why the work is needed:

Chilterns chalk-stream as it is meant to be

Chilterns chalk-stream as it is in too many places

Would we rather have done the job with a mechanical digger?  I’ve always thought it would be fun to sit in the cab of one of those things, but suspect it might not be as easy as it looks.  I expect if I were at the controls, the machine would topple over in 5 minutes.  
In any case, as one of our volunteers observed, essentially this job meant splashing around in the water having fun, bucket-and-spade style digging: “When are we allowed to do that as grown-ups?”

It is also wonderful exercise: you don’t need to go to a conventional gym to experience exercising against resistance (good for muscle-toning), if you have to pull your feet out of the mud every time you realise that otherwise you’ll be sinking relentlessly down.  And it keeps us out of mischief: you’ll not find us “hung over on a Tuesday”!

On arrival for the session, we found that the plank we ‘discovered’, certainly retrieved from the stream, had been turned into a little bridge:

This was today’s find:

“I’ve laid an egg!”

Sadly, our golf expert was not on hand to tell us what grade of ball this is, therefore how valuable (or not).

In the second half of the session, one volunteer was selected for “special duties”.  It was all very mysterious when she disappeared to another part of the site, armed with a net.  It turned out there was a hawthorn-blossom problem on ‘our’ pond (the one we turfed around).  Enter the human skimmer:

“It’s not heavy exercise: it’s like pilates.”

Of course all this mucking about would have been even more fun in warm sunshine; and we knew we were all going to get wet one way or another.  Heavy, not to say torrential, rain had been forecast, so there was some speculation beforehand as to whether it was going to be a “bottom-upwards kind of wet today” or a soaking from above.  It turned out to be both.

When it got to be this wet, we called it a day:

Hedging a bet?

By the session leader:

On hearing that today’s task was “hedging work” how many of us would have put money on it being interesting?

On the other hand, it was a beautiful day to be doing any kind of work outdoors.  Here, in the clear air of the morning-hours before session-start at 10 o’clock, is a hedge we did earlier – in the sense that Wallingford Green-Gym members painstakingly planted it, in the metre-wide gap between two parallel lines of barbed-wire fencing on Riverside Meadow, Crowmarsh:

Those of us who were there, will remember that job well, for it took several sessions.  During one of them, the snow was being blown in our faces almost horizontally!

Today, however, was an almost perfect summer’s day for doing something which was known in advance to be in some way connected with hedges, but which would obviously not – at this time of year – consist of planting, pruning, or laying.  It turned out that the task was in fact to clear a way beside a hedge.

The verges in question, at another Earth-Trust managed site, on the road to Little Wittenham, are very wide: nearly three metres.  The tractor and cutter, however, can only cut two metres from the road edge.  So we were to clear the metre beside the hedge, and also clear the unwanted weeds growing into the hedge.

It immediately became apparent that the verge had become greatly overgrown over the previous week or two.  With tools at the ready, we had to force out way through the first two metres to get to the hedge:

Then we spaced ourselves out for safety, and got to work:

Unfortunately, that food-supplier’s van is delivering to the hidden house, not bringing refreshments for us.

To the passing motorists we were a good advertisement for Green Gym.  For some reason, none of them stopped to join us.

Local wildlife turned out to see what we were doing.  That is the warden’s glove he is on:

a Garden Tiger Moth caterpillar?

Some Green-Gymmers worked standing with dassel-bashers, others bending or kneeling using shears.  Below is not a picture of Green-Gym ceremonial, nor of ceremonious punishment.  It is, however, an example of perspective foreshortening.  The two volunteers were in fact further apart than the image obtained through the lens of the camera appears to show:

By coffee-time, our progress was becoming apparent:

When one side of the hedge was clear …

we moved into the field and cleared that side too.

And Jack (the dog) is the new honorary member of WGG.

It was, in truth, a beautiful day: plenty of sun, a cool breeze, and good exercise.

Mudlarking about

Some people might say a Green-Gymmer is, by definition, either a stick-in-the-mud or in second infancy: doing jobs by hand, which others would do with machinery – or not do at all.  And all for the sake of the exercise and the sheer fun!

Becoming stuck in the mud literally was certainly a possibility today, and one with which several of us flirted.  This was the challenge we were facing:

In the foreground you see a Chilterns chalk-stream as it should be: crystal-clear water flowing freely over a firm gravel bed.  This is a habitat in which watercress flourishes.  Behind, lie dark, still, muddy waters.  You can tell where the silt has built up, because there the watercress is languishing.

Our job?  To dig out the mud!

   

We had dug out mud from ponds before, but not from a stream – so it was sort of a new task for us, also a little bit by way of an experiment in the management of this waterway.  Note the dainty plastic pannier for carrying mud to the bank.

Actually not all the work was done by hand.  As areas were cleared of as much mud as could be removed by human muscle-power, the water-engineering team among the volunteers harnessed the power of the stream itself to wash away at least some of the remainder.  Here they constructed a temporary dam, which proved remarkably effective:

Meanwhile, not all the mud was being moved directly to the bank.  On the central concrete bund gradually accumulated a big pile of mud + other items found in the stream, left there to dry before some other people move it:

One of the “archaeological finds” in the stream caused much excitement: “It’s an Anglo-Saxon longboat”; “I’m expecting a whole village under here!”  Sadly, it was only one plank, but it took the combined efforts of several Green-Gymmers (“girl power”) to extract it from the mud …

and land it safely on shore:

By session end, we had cleared the first section of the brook downstream from Ewelme Bridge:

The last spadeful

Before we left the site, there was a chance to take a quick detour to see how ‘our’ turf was coming on.  This was the turf we had cut, transported, and laid the other day around a new pond.  It was gratifying to see the grass (and buttercups) flourishing: