A cunning plan or a slightly cuckoo idea?

By the Session Leader:

Today we were to be working at one of our favourite sites: the Queen’s Arbour – the southern section of Lower Meadow, below Wallingford Castle.

The gateway to Lower Meadow was flooded:

Those of the team who had parked in the lane, to meet up at our usual RV point in the Upper Meadow (that was most of us this morning) had to walk the long way round:

But that was not a problem.  The site warden led the way, and pointed out some of the flourishing botanical life of the meadows.  This, for instance, Cardamine pratensis, is better known as the Cuckoo Flower or Lady’s Smock:

[We hoped its delicate beauty was not a presentiment of nature mocking our endeavours in the royal lady’s arbour. – Ed.]

Our main job was to dismantle an old fence-line beside the Thames Path, ahead of contractors coming in to put in a new one.  New fencing, that is, not a new public footpath.

The first task was to prise out staples from fence-posts, before the barbed wire could be retrieved.  This was where heavy-duty fencing pliers came in handy: lighter examples of the tool proved to be not fit for purpose.

“Four lines of wire,” said the site warden.  One line of Green-Gymmers promptly stepped forward – each volunteer working on one post at a time:

Some of us considered that the hardest part was simply finding four staples per post:

Others maintained that locating the metalwork was the easy bit: the difficulty came when trying to extract staples where they had been driven right into a post, flush with the timber, rather than being left slightly proud so that a worker with pliers could get a hold and lever them out:

Once the staples had been found and removed, the barbed wire could be rolled up into neat coils.  This was one volunteer’s technique.  It may look like he is practising his moves for a spot of May-morning Morris dancing:

Actually he is not just waving the stick in the air, he is rolling the wire around an improvised spool to save handling the barbs:

This left bare posts to be removed: a task which had defeated us in the past – and which we could have left to contractors with their tractor.  The difficulty in the Lower Meadows is that the ground is frequently sodden, meaning wood which has been sunk into the earth, swells.  When a Green-Gymmer comes along and tries to lift out a fence-post, it either snaps at ground level, or sits tight and refuses to budge. 

But Green-Gymmers always look forward to a challenge!  We had therefore put on our thinking caps during the week, and begged the site warden if she would very kindly “please postpone the tractor till we have had fun trying?”

Our plan was this.  In order to achieve sufficient purchase on a post to lift it by hand, we would drill a hole, about an inch in diameter, through the post, pass a yard-long steel rod through the aperture, and twist the post to free it up:

And with a person either side, twist a bit more …

then heave …

and heave again:

The relief when this method did sort of work!

Modified rapture, however, was all we could muster.  Moderate success had indeed been achieved, but it took much too long to lift more than a few posts.  More work is needed to improve the technique for next time.

Meanwhile, for those who had finished with removing metalwork (or vegetation) from the fence-line, there was another job: to dismantle and remove an old burn-platform from the other side of the meadow.  Those who opted for that were given tantalising glimpses of bluebells in the pond area beyond the ditch:

At session-end, here was proof positive that the ingenuity and labours on the part of the fence-removers had achieved at least some success:

Another Busy Day

By ‘C’ (with additional photography from the session leader):

Back on Beacon Hill for the last scrub-bash of the season! 

Well the last scrub-clearing for us at this site anyway.  Actually the first task was an impromptu Green-Gym quiz in the site yard.  What were these things, being temporarily stored in the sheep-pens? 

Giant hairbrushes; mug-trees; hat-stands; feed-stations for livestock (“You hang hay on the spikes”); equipment for preparing fleeces (“scaling wool – after carding”) …  With mock solemnity, the suggestions came thick and fast.  But no-one guessed correctly, or even got close.

The answer was: spare parts for a wood sculpture.  They represent barley.

Then we played ‘follow my leader’.  To be more precise, the game of follow the landie until it stopped beside the work-area:

And at last, we got down to work.  For whatever reason, I seemed to arrive at the target zone some considerable time before the others.  I had not been running, honest!  I cannot think that it was a general lack of enthusiasm for a high-energy destructive task on a day blessed with perfect Green-Gym weather.  Maybe I just have more of a “killer instinct”.  [Green-Gymmers are, of course, all proud of doing things well which are a. legal, b. socially useful & responsible. – Ed.]

At any rate, in order to get down to work, I headed straight up the slope: to take out first the scrub which was growing higher up, and therefore further away from the bonfire area.  The ground was remarkably bare for mid-April.  The only species of chalk-grassland flower that had really got going was the dog violet.  Even those specimens became fewer, the higher one climbed.  It was also decidedly breezier up top: once severed, whole sections of small-tree were behaving like tumbleweed!  One big advantage of my station, however, was that noise from the motorway was less obtrusive.  Indeed I myself barely noticed it.

Dog violet is, I think, a different species from that which features in The House at Pooh Corner.  For I am fairly sure that the Shepard illustration shows Piglet smelling one, whereas the sweet little flowers on the hillside this morning were unscented.  Even so, I kept thinking of various lines from the story, ‘Rabbit has a Busy Day’.  [Don’t worry: none of the volunteers picked any of the wild flowers. – Ed.]

… it suddenly came over [Piglet] that nobody had ever picked Eeyore a bunch of violets … and he thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him.  So he hurried out again, saying to himself, “Eeyore, Violets” and then “Violets, Eeyore,” in case he forgot, because it was that sort of day …

My visual reward for reaching the edge of the slope (before it reaches the line of a path, and the ground dips down again) – another view of motorway:

Had the session been slow to get going?  Possibly.  [“Like a rusty squeeze-box?” – Ed.]  But from just a single Green-Gymmer deployed, one by one all the other parts of the team’s music had come in.  Below, the fire-setter had evidently met with ready success.

Passing up and down the slope with the cuttings from ‘my’ zone, gave some interesting perspectives on the different tools and techniques the scrub-cutters were using (loppers and ‘tree-poppers’ mostly) and varying ways of managing to work on the slope:

Further ingenuity was required when preparing for tea-break, to keep the trays on a level:

There had been neither bad parking on the part of the driver of the landie, nor failure on part of picture-editor to straighten the photograph.  That vehicle really is astride the Chilterns scarp.

By session end, I could certainly see where I had been:

I hasten to add that I had only literally – not metaphorically – been looking down on my fellow-volunteers.

They too, by the end of the morning, looked ready for a rest.  I trust that was not in fact first-aid being administered!