Blown away

Glorious Green-Gym weather for the start of this week.  Yesterday was bracing, but magnificent:

View from the Chilterns, across Wallingford, towards where WGG was scheduled to work this week: Wittenham

Then came the weather forecast for today, Green-Gym day: heavy rain.  Who would be the lucky ones?  Those out in the elements, acquiring more experience and instruction in the ancient craft of hedge-laying (a new skill for most of our Green Gym)?  Or those of us who, long before the weather forecast was issued, had opted out of today’s session on the grounds that one experience of hedge-laying had been quite enough to convince us that we were not born hedgecore?

Billhook and sharpening stone

Our instructions soon came through: that although the leadership team know we volunteers are prepared to go out in all weathers, nevertheless the session was cancelled, because the forecast was for it to be “both windy and very wet.” 

They were not kidding about the potential for damage from the wind as it freshens up again.  A yellow-warning for “strong north-westerlies” is in force for later today.  This, seen yesterday at a site elsewhere in the Chilterns, is an example of what sturdy south-westerlies did earlier this week:

So no Green Gym today.

Back to spring

By ‘C’:

“I thought we’d done with snow for this year,” is a sentiment expressed quite a lot round here lately. 

For after last week’s respite, Siberian winds returned – leaving the rest of nature also looking a bit put out, if you’ll excuse the anthropomorphism.

The unseasonable white stuff, however, did not stick around for long.  Air temperatures had only to lift their noses above freezing, and the great thaw got underway quickly, courtesy of relatively warm ground temperatures.   A brisk breeze from the east?  Served to dry roads and pavements all the more quickly.

Even by yesterday, nature seemed determined to make up for lost time.  The wind veered to northerly, so the air a little chillier than one would expect at this time of year, but much brighter and drier.  At various nest-sites, which had been reserved, but where no building works had yet begun (avian land-banking?) birds set to work.  Only we Green-Gymmers were left with nothing constructive – or even destructive – to do.

For in the meantime, this sad message had come in from the venue where we had been going to do some vegetation clearance:

Due to the adverse weather conditions we feel we must cancel ...  The snow has flattened the vegetation too much to scythe, and made the debris too wet to burn.  There is little else to do [here] …

Nothing daunted, some of us made immediate plans to get together for at least some exercise and socialising.  Green Gym doesn’t give up easily!  “Could we,” suggested one volunteer, “go and examine our otter holt [not too close-up, of course – Ed.] beside the river and go up round the castle?”

So those of us who wished (some preferred to stop at home and use the opportunity to catch up on other jobs, domestic or horticultural) met for a walk round Wallingford Castle Meadows:

We did indeed look at where the otter holt had been built, back in 2014:

It looks like the external cladding has since been expanded to provide additional habitat space for invertebrates.

Our walk was partly by way of revisiting previous triumphs, eg discovering that some of us (not including myself) had been right in thinking we remembered a burn-site at a particular spot …

partly by way of general site-seeing …

partly by way of nature-observation – here snake’s-head fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) …

 

partly by way of exercise …

partly by way of socially-useful work:

And, of course, by way of social get-together.  For at the end of the walk we rounded off the morning at the home of one of our members, with hot drinks and home-made cake.

Our route to the re-plen point was not entirely straightforward.  Plans had to be revised on account of one locked gate:

"This gate may be opened or closed at any time without warning."  Why?

This did, however, lead us to spend more time contemplating an unusual piece of work which had not been undertaken by Green Gym:

“This gate is unhinged!”

And we did eventually make it through to a lane, which yielded rich pickings for the wombles among our party, and prompted fond recollections among others:

“It’s like the door to the Secret Garden!”

So a cut-down version of Green Gym today – “the essence of Green Gym” according to one participant – and a good time was had by all, including the dog.

Ice Stopped Play

 By ‘C’:

Superficially, today may have looked like perfect Green-Gym weather.  After wintry storms at the weekend, this:

The trouble was that after all the wet stuff falling out of the sky, there had not been time, or sufficiently high temperatures, for a thorough thaw everywhere before clear skies meant the mercury fell starkly.  As it is wont to do in this part of the country. 

Actually it was not a deep overnight frost by South-Oxon standards: only down to -8.8 Celsius.  (As recorded at the nearest weather station: RAF Benson, 07:00).  It has to be at least double-digit negative for folks in my village to start admitting that it is “a bit cold.” 

Nevertheless, it was quite chilly enough to ensure that it would be seriously slippery underfoot on site.  This is what it was like riverside opposite the town after which our group is named:

Where we had been scheduled to work, however, perches on the Chilterns scarp, some 500’ above the Thames Valley floor.  The situation on the ground there: quite different.  Green Gym is fun, but, in the words of the reserves-manager who is on the spot: “it is not worth putting people at risk with the travel, weather conditions, and site hazards.”

Thus, with reluctance – we do not like admitting being defeated by the elements – we cancelled the session.  So what to do instead?

Go to ‘real gym’?  [Where discussion between people working out has been about whether ‘Die Hard’ is really a Christmas movie. – Ed.]  Well one of our members did, and here is the photo to prove it – the nearest we could get to a group-use of the time today was for us each to do our own thing, then those of us with digital cameras share our images.

“Not such a ‘greengym’.”
– “No, but a much warmer one.”

There were several ‘green threads’ running through the “What I did this morning” replies which came into my Inbox.  Many of us had opted for a walk.  Properly kitted out, of course, before venturing beyond the ice curtain:

For some, initial views from the inside were decidedly wintry:

“Any stakes or binders here?”

“Silent vigil”

But it was certainly well worth the effort to get into the Great Outdoors if one could.  At Little Meadow (where we have occasionally worked sessions) “the grasses.were.frosted”:

Contrast last time one of us was there on Green-Gym business:

Souvenirsde nos beaux jours de l’été

Rubbish featured in several Green-Gymmers’ experiences.  The commodity, that is; not a value judgement on the morning.  I myself began, as always on a Tuesday (as soon as I am dressed in outdoor togs), by wheeling bins from addresses along the terrace-row where I live.  Then lining them up kerbside ready for collection:

Except that this time I had first checked on the council website that householders were supposed to put their bins out as normal; 26-tonne dustbin-lorries will not be able to make it along some of the roads in the area.  Also I had to port around remnants of an impromptu neighbourhood community-art project, which I think must have sagged in the brief thaw:

Another Green-Gymmer, on the way home from country walk, picked litter …

then “returned to the day’s main task of making breadsticks for an Italian themed Christmas party in the village”:

“A cool reception” from some other figures about this morning was another recurring theme:

“I’ve been chopping logs and making kindling for tonight’s fire,” reported one member.  A quintessentially countryside task in winter!  But as she said, “What a shame we aren’t on top of the hills in this glorious sunshine.”

As for me, after doing what all photographers do when the light promises well – get out there for the half hour before and after the sun crosses the horizon – I hurried back into the warmth.  Then drank coffee and edited all the wonderful copy being sent in by fellow Green-Gymmers as the morning progressed.