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: