Double rations

Compiled from the records made by the respective session leaders:

Two lovely days to report on.  Both very dry.  Both involving vegetation surplus to requirements + bonfire.

First, the session last week (4 April): a less strenuous task than usual.  As anticipated, three large piles of brash left from a hedge-laying course were waiting to be burned.   

This did not involve quite as much work as usual, because they were positioned right beside the fire site.  This was just one of the heaps:

Even lighting the fire was going to be easier than usual, as the warden had brought two broken bales of straw to burn to get the fire going:

Indeed it did not take long to get a good blaze – one large enough that the brash did not have to be cut up, but could be thrown straight on the fire:

Even the locals stop for a tea break:

At the end all three piles had completely disappeared:

We even had time to stand and watch the fire burn out:

Today (11 April), we were, as is usual for Green Gym, at a different site.  Following weekend temperatures which had seemed remarkably high for England in April, nature was – in many spots – much further advanced.  On the way to our morning’s session, many of us noticed the bluebells beginning their woodland-floor display:

The task was similar to the previous week’s, in the sense that once again we were dealing with great piles of cuttings …

This time, however, the cuttings were fresh.  And they were ones which we ourselves were producing.

This forbidding mass of bramble and scrub was our target:

The particular reason why it had to go (“now before the birds get too far ahead with nesting”) was that it was blocking an all-important sight-line, from the high pasture down to the corner gate.  Important to sheep, that is.  They do not like being moved in a direction which looks to them like a dead end.

Before any flames could be kindled today, a glade had to be cleared around an old fire-site first.  This lay at the centre of the thicket.  Having negotiated the one narrow entrance to the middle of the thicket, some volunteers then had to start creating a fire-break:

The fire itself had to be painstakingly put together from smaller starting materials …

and grew only slowly:

It was still barely in its infancy by tea-break.

Our break was held beneath a most handsome whitebeam (Sorbus Aria).  At first sight, it looked as if it was coming into flower:

On closer examination, we could see that its decoration was the foliage coming into bud.  It is the leaves with their distinctive white underside which give the species its name:

As it happens, the blossom, which will appear later, is also white.  In former times, the tree was particularly prized not so much for its beauty as for the hardness of its wood: good for making cog wheels, for instance.

Progress seemed more rapid in the second half of the session, if only because those working on the thicket from the outside, working their way towards the centre, ‘broke through’ and met up with those on the inside of the circle, who were still working in the opposite direction.  This week, the fire had to be ‘shut down’ before we had burned all the brash which had been generated:

Where we left off, our colleagues from Sonning Common GG will continue.  Even so, many of us were pleasantly surprised by just how much ground we had cleared.  Here volunteers are putting the finishing touches to our work:

This had been the view from the higher ground beforehand:

Now the gate was clearly visible:

 

As we packed up, and trudged back to our vehicles (uphill, of course!) we could reflect that it had indeed been a good morning’s work: