All in order

Almost more hands than work to do – or space to do it in (safely) this morning!

The venue was one of the smaller sites, and weather was very pleasant, but not in our favour for undertaking all the tasks on site warden’s wish-list:

• Repairs to part of the boardwalk   YES
• Hazel coppicing   YES
• Bonfire if weather suitable   NO, weather not suitable: blue skies once more, but high wind
• Stream clearance (brook flowing from Ewelme to River Thames)   YES
• Vegetation clearance on the banks of the Thames itself   YES, with caution

So no firestarter required today.  Instead those who could, changed footwear from work-boots to wellies/waders.

Most of those equipped not exactly elegantly, but practically for working in water marched upstream in search of Things To Do:

Waterside Things To Do fell roughly into two categories.  On the one hand, there was working with – or rather cutting back and removing – vegetation.  In Benson Brook …

and beside the Thames:

Not all plants encountered could be identified.  Anyone know what this is?

On the other hand, there were also engineering works:

Meanwhile, back at the hazel coppice, there could be no doubting that there was work to be done.  The trees planted there are harvested for rods on a cyclical basis.  So, it was the turn of some of them to be cut back, but which ones precisely?  It is important that they are all done in the right order.

That took a little while to get sorted, but it was all sorted in the end: