Have we been here before?

Something needed to be done.  Overgrowing vegetation impinging on a public right of way, the odd bit of rotten, ivy-encrusted treelet entirely collapsed on to the track – and nobody quite sure whose responsibility this is.   

Enter Green Gym:

   

A couple of volunteers experienced that déjà vu feeling.  Was this a task we had undertaken before, many moons ago?  (Like a circle in a spiral, a wheel within a wheel?)  Answer was yes: today we were indeed on the job second time round.  

Almost within minutes you could see where places had already been given “a good seeing to” while workers were applying finishing touches:

Further down the track, heading towards the water meadows, the amount of encroachment was variable.  There were stretches where considerably more work was needed than in other places:

Where the scrub cover was lighter on one side than the other, we concentrated on the worst-affected side:

Below is not a red flag indicating an overhanging branch, just a suitable coat hanger whilst a nose was being blown:

Meanwhile, actually on the site (as opposed to just outside the boundary), a smaller team was repairing the steps – made by WGG, aeons ago – which lead down to the pond:

  

Digging out was to allow for insertion of a new recycled-plastic step board.  What is not obvious from the photograph is the mass of fairly large roots encountered.  An axe was called for, but none being available, a mattock was wielded to good effect instead.

Tidying up the steps on the other side provided infill material:

This is the result of the replacement step.  Odd angles, we are fairly sure, due to perspective of camera lens.  The lines looked straight to the naked eye.

Right the far side of the site, a fence rail was also refitted.  Can you tell which one?  

No, neither could we, when we looked back; but refitted it was!

Tea break was hosted in the middle of the site, making use of one of the benches as a serving counter.

For those who had been working in the gloom, siding up the overgrown pathway, it was a welcome opportunity to be out in the fresh air and daylight – albeit watery sunbeams.  Beneath the canopy of encroaching scrub, sunlight had been something one was only aware of at one remove.  Here, backlighting vegetation:

Over a cuppa there were exotica to observe:

Is that a koala up a tree in Oxfordshire?

– Well we've got camels, llamas & wallabies, and so on, so why not?

 

In the second half, forces were concentrated on track clearance, as the pond-step repair gang was transferred to the bridleway.  Still plenty to be done!

A lot of the cut material was stacked in the hedgerow to act as wildlife habitat:

Some of the brash just needed gentle persuasion back off the edge of the track:

We still ended up with a pile of cut material that we couldn’t persuade into the hedgerow:

Come session end there may have been plenty more yet to be done – by someone.  You could tell, however, which sections still need a bit more of a trim than others: