Ock Valley Walk, Town End, 29th November 2014

By Andrew -
The weather turned fine and sunny after a night of heavy rain for our session at the town end of the Ock Path. The tasks were to inspect the young trees and clear around them, tidy up fallen branches and make habitat piles and pick up litter. We had decided not to renew the woodchip on the woodchip path at this stage as the area was quite likely to flood during the winter and wash away our good work, but to leave this task until the early spring. 

 We split up into small groups for our various activities. There was a lot of litter at the Drayton Road end of the path, especially where a footpath cuts through from Ock Street to Drayton Road. Along the path and under the bridge is a notorious litter blackspot as people buy food and drink at the corner shop and discard the annoying and cumbersome packaging as they proceed homewards.

When teabreak time arrived, we had cleared around many of the young trees and found that most of them were in good condition. As well as the usual biscuits, Dieuwke had brought some delicious stollen, which we all enjoyed very much. We continued with our tidying and clearing work, finding a lot of untidy branches from felled trees, which we put into existing habitat piles. It was then time to gather up our tools and return to the car park, after which some people went on to participate in the delights of the Christmas extravaganza in the town centre.
-Eleanor

Barry and Enid set to work clearing round the young trees


Colin coppices a hazel


Teabreak


Petra tackles some branches

Kate adds to the habitat pile

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pinkhill Meadow Nature Reserve, Farmoor Reservoir, 16th March 2019

By Andrew -
Image
Another week, another new site for the Abingdon Green Gym! We met at the car park at Farmoor Reservoir, a healthy turn out of 17 of us, including French father Sebastien, and his eleven-year old son, Maelo, who was joining us for a school project. The session was led by James under the instruction of Hanna Jenkins, the warden of Pinkhill Meadow Nature Reserve, so called because it is right on the banks of the River Thames, just near Pinkhill Lock. It was another blustery day. Will this crazy wind ever let up? We followed Hanna in convoy round the edge of the reservoir, which was choppy to say the least, and parked up on the other side where it was thankfully a little calmer, the high banks of the reservoir providing some shelter. Equipped with our tools, gloves and goggles, we made our way onto the spot on the nature reserve where we were to do our work. Hanna told us that the reserve had been formed in 1991, but some aspects had been neglected over the last ten years. The aim
Read more

Kennington Memorial Field, 29th October 2016

By Andrew -
We have been working at Kennington Memorial Field for a number of years now, clearing scrub from the slopes so that the valley remains an area of grassland and wild flowers. This time Rachel from Oxford Preservation Trust was in charge and led us down to the lower end of the field, where we were to cut back the trees and bushes by several metres and burn the scrub on a bonfire. We were joined by some families with children of varying ages, the youngest only three, who had answered a local appeal for volunteers. We set to work and soon we had a bonfire going. Even the children who were too young to use loppers and saws joined in, carrying branches to the bonfire pile. Despite the drizzly weather they all worked cheerfully. At tea break time we enjoyed some delicious snacks that Rachel had brought and a tin of chocolates supplied by Michele. We found two old birds' nests in the course of the morning and cutting back the scrub revealed a log pile with a rabbit hole under
Read more

Ock Valley Walk, Town End, 22nd June 2013

By Andrew -
Image
Quite a small group gathered for this session and the weather didn't look promising. However, we were pleased to welcome a new member, Laura. We set off for the woodchip path,where we made our encampment. The nettles had grown high and dense since our previous visit, almost concealing the young trees, compising beech, oak, silver birch, cherry and rowan, which we had planted as whips almost two and a half years previously. One of our tasks was to clear the nettles and other vegetation immediately around them. As you can see from the photo of the young cherry, most of the trees are flourishing. Other tasks were to cut up and clear fallen branches into piles and the inevitable litter picking. There was a sharp shower shortly before 11 o'clock but it had stopped when we gathered for a welcome tea break. By the end of the morning we had finished clearing round the trees, tidied away the dead wood and picked up quite a respectable amount of litter, though I suspect t
Read more