Abbey Fishponds, 7th February 2015

By Andrew -
Green Gym was a big group this morning under Sally’s leadership and was swelled by the Abbey Fishponds volunteer team, whose leader Marjorie briefed us on our tasks which included laying woodchip paths, cutting and stacking small trees and clearing brush, and litter- picking.
-Barry


Marjorie (in the green jacket) at the briefing session, along with Loretta from the Earth Trust who now manage the site
James cutting prolific tree growth

Peter from Abbey Fishponds group. Raking grass is hard work!

Andrew makes a really nice woodchip path!

It looks so much better than when it’s all mud

Rihanna (right) comes to Green Gym regularly as part of her Duke of Edinburgh Award programme

Colin with his ever-useful and adaptable trolley

“Well it’s litter, but not as we know it!” Kate, with Dieuwke following up

At last!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abingdon Green Gym x Sustrans Path Clearing, Saturday 26th of February, 2022

By -
Image
 This Saturday was rather special as it marked the first big work party in which we (Abingdon Green Gym) and Sustrans joined forces! Sustrans are a national charity which work to improve the provision for walking, cycling, and wheeling; so whatever people's abilities they can safely use travel routes in order to get healthier, feel better, and protect the planet.  Adrian and some of the Sustrans team had already been out earlier in the week for a preparatory litter pick and to drop letters to the residents of Abingdon in the area we were working. We hope that in hearing about our work and seeing the improvement of the path, residents will feel more empowered to take ownership of the maintenance of their local travel routes. As we are all well aware, it can be a difficult job to try and get local authorities to maintain these routes themselves, so community action is our best bet (and who knows how to show off the value of team work than Abingdon Green Gym!) It was a lovely sunny sp
Read more

Southern Town Park, Saturday 26th of March 2022

By -
Image
This week's blog post was written by our esteemed chair, Eleanor D: Arriving at our usual meeting place for Southern Town Park, we found the car park ram packed with vehicles of parents bringing footballing kids. There was clearly some kind of tournament on. The earlier arrivals managed to squeeze into the remaining spaces but the others had to find spaces out in the road. We set off round the perimeter of the pitches to reach our encampment at the southern end and split into groups to pick litter, saw up fallen trees and work on the wild flower patch.  First, we needed to dig up nettles, cleavers and grass and clear ten patches to sow the new seeds. It was three years ago that we last worked on the patch. In 2020 we were prevented by Covid, in 2021 by bureaucracy but this year nothing could stop us. After the break we were ready to sow the seeds. We had meadow cranesbill, greater knapweed, small scabious, betony, foxglove, dark mullein, dropwort, white musk mallow and viper’s bugl
Read more

Abbey Fishponds, Saturday 23rd October, 2021

By -
Image
  This week the Abingdon Green Gym team were at the Abbey Fishponds (which contain neither fish, nor an abbey). As the Earth Trust website explains, this site is so named because it was thought that the embankment on the site was a medieval dam built by the abbey to create ponds for fish, but archaeological evidence shows that it is more likely to be the remains of a roman causeway. Whatever the history, Abingdon Green Gym were here in the present to help manage the site under the guiding hand of Tim from Earth Trust. We also welcomed two new volunteers, Liz and Mike, who we were very happy to have with us!  We started with a safety briefing from Tim and the day's GG leader, Adrian, before splitting off in to groups to tackle the morning's wide-ranging tasks. There were three main activities for the day. Firstly, scything, raking, and piling the ever-rampant reeds. Secondly, bow-sawing down and neatly piling straying willow into rudimentary hedges, and lastly (but not least-ly)
Read more