Rock and Roll at Castle Meadows

By a volunteer

It may have been one of the range of ‘eats’ at tea-break which resulted in a crop of ‘roll’ puns among those present at the session:

At one point, I thought I heard someone say something about “chocolate voles!”  That may, however, have been just the product of an over-active imagination plus the fact that what we were doing was for the benefit of water voles.

The task was to clear scrub which had gradually been making a comeback along a ditch which our group had cleared many years before:

It was slightly disconcerting that, being around a steep ditch, one could find oneself looking down on a fellow-volunteer who was working further down the slope:

It was a slightly dull day to be working in the great outdoors, and perhaps not the most exciting job we have ever done:

All the same, it was good exercise.  Here for the core muscles and shoulder-girdle,
as demonstrated by our session-leader leading by example:

What a good roll model!

The 11th man in the team of volunteers was Charlie, who clearly saw it as his duty to watch over us, come what may: 

Then he got tired.  (As did several others of us.)  In the second half of the session, first he sat on guard:

Then he lay on guard:

Finally he wandered over for a cuddle:

Like me, he was covered in burrs from head to toe!

The results of our efforts were, however, plain to see.  Let’s hope the water voles like it:

Before

After

The session leader adds:

This is the creature whose home and habitat we were saving:

They like to have water – and our ditch was virtually dry.  It was, however, just as well that the ditch was dry, as it allowed these two members to climb in and seriously coppice a willow, which was growing in the middle of the channel:

Cutting back scrub helps one creature, but exposes another one’s home.  We think the tunnel under this branch was a rabbit’s front porch:

Here is our ‘tool-fairy’ with the tools of the day.  He counted them all out, and he counted them all back in:

He will have one more job at home: to get all those burdock burrs off his hat as well as Charlie’s fur.

The Green Submarine

Was it mention of the word ‘compartment’ in the site warden’s advance email, or memories of how much it rained last time we were here, which had me instantly think, “Submersibles”?

The brief we had been sent for today’s session sounded unusually precise:

to cut and burn scrub (mostly hawthorn and bramble) in compartment 0.2,
at the bottom of the reserve … 

At least it would mean – I thought – that if the weather turned foul, we would not this time be on one of the exposed upper slopes.  I had imagined that we might nevertheless still find ourselves wishing we could conjure up a colourful submarine.  And indeed on arrival at the RV point, the weather did not look too promising:

As we waited for colleagues to arrive, there was some chatter around the unusual range of reasons there were this week for some not being able to make it.  Two of our number are on the injured roster (making good progress, I understand, but not quite yet ready for the rigours of Green Gym – it takes time for tendons to mend); one said she had the “plague”; one had a funeral to attend; one was in (or on the way back from) France; one in Australia; etc.

It then turned out that to get to where we would actually be working, we needed to walk “three or four hundred metres along the path” – uphill.  And then turn right, through a gateway familiar to some of us from a session before, where we cleared overgrowing vegetation for public access:

This led on to a slope which is about as exposed as any on the site:

Fortunately, the weather was kind to us today.  It was not the best of days to be viewing autumn colours, but rain did not actually fall out of the sky.

Moreover, the fire marshal may have looked pensive for much of the morning:

The bonfire did, however, get going well enough:

As for those cutting and slashing, sawing and lopping, chopping and carrying, we worked with some abandon this morning:

For some reason military metaphors seemed to come to several minds other than my own.  Here our eirenic Tools Officer proudly announced that he had “taken the enemy out” in his sector:

“There was a pillbox there!”

In another place, cutting back bramble revealed a long-forgotten habitat pile, which was left in place:

Today was also a Green-Gym ‘first birthday’ (1st anniversary of joining).  It was marked with chocolate – many happy returns, Andy!

Below is the scene when we volunteers left at session end.  Bramble and scrub had been cleared; hazel had been coppiced for healthy regrowth; and note in the foreground, juniper which was also deliberately left in place: