Ock Valley Walk, Town End, 29th November 2014

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