Meeting in a Mist

By C

Now this would have been the weather for today:

Glorious!  If it were like that for All Saints, there’d be no complaints.

Unfortunately, that golden warmth and the scent of fresh-mown grass were yesterday afternoon: Hallowe’en.  Ha!  Today, 1 November, started misty and mysterious: ideal for evoking a sense of the mildly spooky or alchemist-y?  By session-start, climatic conditions had evolved into the merely dark and dank.  Still mild, though (“a good temperature to be working in”) and not, of course, nearly comparable to the murk experienced elsewhere in the world.

With every excuse to be a slightly dispirited bunch of saints-under-construction this morning, Green-Gymmers were commendably determined not to let the mood be de-railed by a spell of inopportune weather.  A slate of tasty tasks helped, plus the new-experience value of our first session at this site under the direction of the new warden-team.  Our new boss (when we’re at this site: Anne Carpmael Charitable Trust) definitely believes in leading from the front:

These were the tasks in hand today – a nice range, so that all participants could find the right level and variety of exercise for them:

҉   Improving visitor-access

The target here was a new path between bridleway and study centre.  The project had been started by another group: they had got as far as laying scalpings, but that section still needed the top surface adding.  There was also scope to widen the path-line for easier wheelchair-access.  That involved first of all a lot of digging …

then placing carpet, scalpings, and top layer:

Finally the new surface was levelled, to put the finishing touch on a “really neat” job …

and proud workers (well some of them) assembled for a rare posed Green-Gym portrait:

҉   Habitat construction

The aim was to build a reptile bank in the otherwise under-used patch of ground between the back of the study centre and the railway embankment.  This too involved first of all a lot of digging:

The first phase of construction was to hollow out a large pit – stripping the turf, then excavating the soil – and filling in the hole with a layer of rubble, then logs:

The second phase – which drew in Green-Gymmers from the other tasks – was to cover over with earth, and top with turf:

“Bronze-age burial mound” or “snakarium”?

The plot had been carefully marked out so that the side with entrance-points faces south.  So that it can be warmed by the sun.  When there is any.

Both of those jobs involved much transporting and handling of materials.  This made for an excellent opportunity for one volunteer to try out a new pair of good thick (dragonhide?) gloves:

The third task, which some volunteers alternated with other jobs, was:

҉   Weeding

This may not sound attractive, but ‘weeding’ here meant working in one of the woodland areas, and removing unwanted/excess sycamore seedlings:

That a wizard time was had by all, is no mystery.  And the forecast for tomorrow is for it to be like this:

Working for the benefit of future generations

By the session leader:

The Green Gym plaque on the gateway proclaims We Woz ’Ere, and here we are again.  

This time, to do river-bank restoration (green engineering).   The aim is to restore the natural line of the water-edge on this stretch of the Thames beside Wallingford.  At two critical spots, the bank has had a bite taken out of it.  In one place, the bank was demolished by cattle walking down to the river to drink.  In the other place, it has been worn away below the water-line by the effect of inconsiderate humans (deep wash created by boats being powered too fast along this reach).

The landrover arrives with a trailer-load of “bundles”:

Bundles of willow branches, that is, aka … [we can’t say on the internet, not even if we post a disambiguation notice beside the term – Ed.]  These bundles were produced last winter at Mowbray Fields, Didcot – very probably by us – and have been kept in storage ever since, awaiting the necessary license for the work from the Environment Agency.

The first task is to unload the consignment …

then to retie the bundles, which have come apart during the long wait to be Useful:

There is a great debate about the best knot to use:

• the postman’s ‘parcel knot’
• the trucker's knot (‘the slip-one-way-but not-t’other knot’)
• a loop knot with a long tail for a reef knot
• a sailor’s bowline with a couple of hitches to finish

Meantime, some of the sturdier branches are to be made into verticals, to hold bundles in position.  To cut a point on a stake efficiently, you check which way the branch bends, and start with a cut on the inside of the largest bend …

then turn the stake over, and cut on the other side.  That way, the stake will tend to go in straight when driven into the ground, and will be easy to bash into place.

With three on the job, it is easy to keep up a good rate of production:

"Just listening to the sound, you'd think we were back in the bronze age"

The first batch of materials ready, volunteers just have to find the edge of the shoreline amid the fiery autumn colours:

Next, bank in one or two stakes to form a framework, with nature’s own hammer, aka a ‘bodger’:

By tea-time, the landie is half empty.  So there is room for the more delicious apple cake:

Finally, we can fill in – with bundles laid between the stakes – to make a substantial barrier.  This will trap the silt when the river floods, and collect lovely soil for at least some of the stakes to take root and build up the bank again:

And in a hundred years’ time, no-one will know just from looking at the river-bank that there ever had been a problem with erosion.