Working for the benefit of future generations

By the session leader:

The Green Gym plaque on the gateway proclaims We Woz ’Ere, and here we are again.  

This time, to do river-bank restoration (green engineering).   The aim is to restore the natural line of the water-edge on this stretch of the Thames beside Wallingford.  At two critical spots, the bank has had a bite taken out of it.  In one place, the bank was demolished by cattle walking down to the river to drink.  In the other place, it has been worn away below the water-line by the effect of inconsiderate humans (deep wash created by boats being powered too fast along this reach).

The landrover arrives with a trailer-load of “bundles”:

Bundles of willow branches, that is, aka … [we can’t say on the internet, not even if we post a disambiguation notice beside the term – Ed.]  These bundles were produced last winter at Mowbray Fields, Didcot – very probably by us – and have been kept in storage ever since, awaiting the necessary license for the work from the Environment Agency.

The first task is to unload the consignment …

then to retie the bundles, which have come apart during the long wait to be Useful:

There is a great debate about the best knot to use:

• the postman’s ‘parcel knot’
• the trucker's knot (‘the slip-one-way-but not-t’other knot’)
• a loop knot with a long tail for a reef knot
• a sailor’s bowline with a couple of hitches to finish

Meantime, some of the sturdier branches are to be made into verticals, to hold bundles in position.  To cut a point on a stake efficiently, you check which way the branch bends, and start with a cut on the inside of the largest bend …

then turn the stake over, and cut on the other side.  That way, the stake will tend to go in straight when driven into the ground, and will be easy to bash into place.

With three on the job, it is easy to keep up a good rate of production:

"Just listening to the sound, you'd think we were back in the bronze age"

The first batch of materials ready, volunteers just have to find the edge of the shoreline amid the fiery autumn colours:

Next, bank in one or two stakes to form a framework, with nature’s own hammer, aka a ‘bodger’:

By tea-time, the landie is half empty.  So there is room for the more delicious apple cake:

Finally, we can fill in – with bundles laid between the stakes – to make a substantial barrier.  This will trap the silt when the river floods, and collect lovely soil for at least some of the stakes to take root and build up the bank again:

And in a hundred years’ time, no-one will know just from looking at the river-bank that there ever had been a problem with erosion.