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:
No comments:
Post a Comment