When the party is over ...

By the Session Leader:

After a supermoon, a Super Bowl, and two Green-Gym super-sessions (last Tuesday, acquiring a new skillset; last Thursday, a joint session with representatives from all six Oxfordshire Green Gyms) today was back to normal. 

Or as normal as it gets at Green Gym.  Many people may well think that voluntarily wading in a stream in an English February, to do this …

is not entirely ‘normal’ in the sense of average behaviour.  Especially since the weather up to the last moment before session-start was certainly not normal by Green-Gym standards.

Dawn had brought pretty pinks, greys, and blue to the sky.  Five minutes later, the heavens were looking like this:

That did not bode well.  By the time I arrived on site, ahead of the gang, the rain was pelting down, the temperature had fallen again to a miserable 4 C, and windspeed was up to 27 knots, with gusts of 40 kn:

As volunteers arrived, we took temporary shelter in the visitor centre. 

Actually, come to think of it, it is not normal/usual for us to be able to change into our boots in such luxury.  Or with such interesting things to look at.  One old cash register, for example – a reminder that Oxfordshire watercress beds were once thriving commercial enterprises:

Fond recollections of the till in Open All Hours took minds off weather and task waiting for us outside:

(Yes, those blurs in the foreground are real raindrops: on the glass front of the visitor centre, not the camera lens.)

To be fair, site-warden Tom had cherished plans/hopes/aspirations to undertake something more complex at one of the other reserves which he manages.  But site-warden Tom has flu.  So, “Upper site raking off dead cress,” emailed site warden Tom with flu.

This was not a problem.  We have been a watercress gang before, so were ready to get stuck into doing such jobs as seemed to us to be useful on site, with session leader ‘quarterbacking’. 

First task was for the lock experts to unbar the gate leading on to the site:

Then we collected tools, and set off.  And behold, the rain remembered its manners.   It did not stop altogether, but definitely eased off as we moved out on to site: not exactly a flight to rural bliss, but much better than we had dared hope for earlier. 

Still jolly cold, mind!  “One piece of ice came up with the rake,” reported one volunteer after we had been going a few minutes.

As per our instructions, we started at the top of the site …

 

and worked our way downstream, paying particular attention to removing dead cress:

Following best environmental practice, most of the vegetation culled and all the mud dredged up were piled on to the bund, to allow invertebrates to make their getaway.  Only the vegetation which drained quickly and easily, was wheelbarrowed to a compost heap.  Also as bidden, we kept well clear of the half-finished path which is being constructed along the most direct route from the stream to the main compost heap:

There were a few things along the way to draw the eye of the curious, neither of which we could entirely satisfactorily explain.  This beside a subsidiary compost heap:

And this beside an inlet:

[Tom will know, for sure; but Tom has flu.  We may to wait a while for elucidation. – Ed.]

We trust our efforts were not the Green-Gym equivalent of Fiffi-Faffa.  In football: “Aimless midfield passing by a team who think they’re playing tiki-taka, but are simply faffing about.”  Term coined by an exasperated Swansea City supporter?  [So that’s a shift to thinking about football played with a round ball, not an oval one. – Ed.]

As we have done before when weather conditions have been against us, we worked through to a later time for refreshments – and then called it a day.  Refreshments marked the fact that today is Shrove Tuesday:

And food always tastes even better after exercise, prompting one volunteer to say of the morning: 

“Great Pancake Day
– best ever!”