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: