Having a topping time

From the smallest site on our regular schedule to the largest!  Last week, a country-town churchyard.  Today, a national nature reserve.

At 159 hectares, perched on the north-west scarp of the Chiltern Hills, Aston Rowant NNR is so massive that its distinctive features can be seen from miles away.  This is the view of it from the south, from Swyncombe Down:

That photograph taken on another occasion, I hasten to add.  I didn’t add to the exercise-value of this week’s session by hiking all the way there: it was quite far enough for us to walk from the nearest car-park empty-handed, while a site-warden took the long way round with the landrover and all our kit.

Today’s task: thistle topping.  And the precise area where we were working: from most angles, not visible from miles around, but tucked within the cutting made for the motorway – not even in clear view of people travelling along the M40.  We were in the Stokenchurch Gap, below and on the opposite side of the point featured in a BBC radio-4 documentary which had been broadcast just the day before (‘Playing the Skyline’).

Unlike the last occasion that Green-Gymmers were engaged on a thistle-bash, the weather played its part to the good.  For day after day, sunsets have augured well for the following day.  This, for example, on Saturday night:

The dramatic and threatening look, except that, as they say,
it’s a red sky in the morning which posts a warning:
‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’

Yesterday was clear-blue skies and gloriously warm during daylight hours: not quite ideal for people labouring.  Meteorological clues about the morrow were, however, encouraging:

Gold at sunset unmistakeably a promising sign …

… especially when it mellows to pink

Why Homer talked of ‘rosy-fingered Dawn’, when it is rosy-fingered dusk which portends well, I do not know.  Today duly dawned fair, but slightly cooler: very pleasant for us.

Another advantage of (reasonably) clear weather during this last week: good for ‘sky-at-night nerds’.  Some people may have been up half night since Rio 2016 began, following Olympic action; I think I may have been the only one of us, Thursday-Friday, looking to catch any of the Perseids.  (Obviously not ‘catch’ in the Pokémon sense of the word!)  I was very fortunate that all I had to do was to wrap up in a sleeping bag, lie on my back in a dark corner of the garden, with the scent of honeysuckle all around, and marvel at a light-show taking place in complete silence.  Yes, I know one could hardly expect to hear anything, as it all happens so very far away in the upper atmosphere; my wonderful electronic hearing-aids (thank you, the NHS!) would surely screen out any audio-signal they recognized as coming from 60 miles away!  Even so, my brain was half-expecting to be able to hear something; and I did wonder if the hearing-aids might pick up the sympathetic vibrations of plant life and the like to the meteors’ VLF audio-signature.  Answer was NO.

Our arrival on site caused some interest among the occupants of the field next to us.

We suspect their interest was not so much curiosity about what we were doing, as misplaced hope/expectation that it would bring more goodies for them.  As if they needed more treats!  We know that they are well-full and contented animals from the state of the pasture in the field we were going to work: the sheep had already ‘grazed’ it, ie helped themselves to all the best, tender grass, and left the long lanky blades which they will only touch if very hungry.

It can hardly be expected of sheep that they will keep down thistle growth.  The terrain is also not brilliant for tractors: all those ant hills.  So over to volunteers working with a variety of tools: slashers, dasselbashers, and this one, which was new to us – a sort of cross between a dasselbasher and a pruning saw.  Surprisingly effective, I am told, in the field.  Here it is being demonstrated/shown off in the car-park:

Methods of deploying the slasher also varied.  Some labourers just took a swing in the general direction of the target.  Others would carefully tee up each shot, and use more of a golf-swing action:

Each time, of course, hoping for the perfect shot.

Tea-break (much appreciated) was the time when Green-Gym ingenuity was displayed to best effect.  The designers of the landie probably did not have in mind alternative use of the spare wheel as a cake-stand:

There are “a few” thistles left in the paddock for the next working-party: we couldn’t catch ’em all!  The next group on site may well be our colleagues from Sonning Common GG, in which case one of us will return to the site on Thursday to show them the way to the new start-line.  We began this morning close to the landrover, which from the PoV of the lens in the photograph below is parked in the far-right hand corner of the field, beside a clump of trees.

View back from the furthest extent of Green-Gym advance this morning

The other advantage of having site-warden and landie with us: the chance of a lift back for some of our number, while the rest of us walked back up the hill again.

To top off the pleasure of the morning, there was that satisfying feeling that always comes (at least I find it does) from knowing that the group has not only the thanks from the site warden, but also that a small donation to our funds will be on its way to us.  It is nice to be appreciated!  And Green Gym does not run entirely on fresh air + manual labour …