Paths gentle and clear

By ‘C’:

Waiting for one's fellow-volunteers to arrive, a Green-Gym leader really hopes they will not be thinking this during the course of the session:

Actually there were several moments this morning when I felt as behind events as a certain Minister for Magic; but the session rolled on nevertheless.  If there were times when I totted up the number of volunteers I could account for on site, and the answer came to 7 (when I knew perfectly well that we were an 8 at start of play), well the 8th person was located soon enough, safe and sound.

Our RV time was 10:00 as usual, but the place had been changed.  As my passenger remarked, as we arrived, it did feel like driving on to the set for an action film, probably some kind of thriller:

There was an explanation for this.  Our work-site was to be at Neptune Wood, on the Earth Trust estate, but car-parking this morning, was courtesy of the neighbours, the Sylva Wood Trust (another conservation charity, not a movie studio):

They were very kindly letting us use some of their space, while the public car-park for Neptune Wood – not before time – is being resurfaced, with a little help from Tesco:

From the Sylva HQ, our way led up a pretty stretch of field-path:

We have, I think, in the past done work on left hand side of that path, a little further up: something to do with being nice to the wildflowers – hay fever permitting.  On this occasion, the entrance to our work area was a gap in the hedge:

Neptune Wood is still quite young: planted to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.  All the same, there are a few areas in need of some love & attention.  The noticeboards for instance:

We, however, were there to give love and attention, aka ‘side up’, the public rights of way, which were being ‘nibbled away’ by encroaching vegetation:

There are two little bridges on site.  By the time I got to the other one, I found it had already been done – I could see where Green Gym had been:

“Showers”, heavy and slow-moving, seemed to the import of the amber warning which had been issued by the Met Office for later in the morning.  – Except that from the perspective of the person getting wet, ‘heavy, slow-moving showers’ = ‘rain’.  And there sure was quite a lot of that, even if not quite the deluge one had been led to expect.  Nature was soon looking bedraggled:

If you look closely at the skyscape in the background of that second picture, you can see how close we were to Didcot (remaining cooling towers and chimney for the power station), though it didn’t feel like it.

Green Gym carried on regardless, until the job was done – on the principle that there is no such thing as bad weather, just poor choice of clothing.  Let it rain!