Abingdon Green Gym Blog

The new Abingdon Green Gym programme for Spring 2016 has just been published, as below or find a higher-resolution on our website by clicking  HERE

There were two main tasks to be done in Southern Town Park - clearing brambles on the western side of the park, where we hadn't been for over a year, and litter picking. When we arrived, we found there was also a fallen tree in the wooded area, which looked as if it had been partially burnt. There is a great deal of littering as well as fly tipping and sometimes vandalism in this area, which is a shame as it provides varied wildlife habitats as well as walking and leisure for local people. Fortunately there were fourteen Green Gymmers to tackle the work. Several of us set to work on the brambles, others on the litter picking. Kevin and Robert went to saw up the fallen tree and stack the branches. Among the fly tipped items were a bicycle frame, a grill pan and a can of petrol, which had no doubt been used for a spot of arson. We were glad of our tea break and had the relative luxury of a picnic table and some cake. No ginger nuts, though. It appears that the ginger nut fac...

It was a cold and misty morning as we gathered at the car park for Cothill Fen, opposite the Merry Miller pub. We were met as usual here by Judy Webb from Natural England who would supervise the morning's tasks. Following the trek down the path to the fen itself, we were fully briefed on our objectives. Judy had some old photos of the site that she showed us - how the area used to look, with a much larger pond and more expansive fenland area in general.  Our job was therefore to continue cutting back small trees and shrubs that have been encroaching upon the boundary in the interim. The terrain underfoot, in and around the trees, was swamp-like, making it a fairly tricky area in which to operate. However, armed with saws and loppers, we were keen to get underway and to remain warm! Small trees and shrubs were felled and cut into sections, before stacking into piles. We were careful to ensure that species such as willow were kept off the ground so that they wouldn't put do...

It was back to Abrahams Wood, Boars Hill on Saturday, where we met with Andy Gunn from Oxford Preservation Trust who was supervising our session. There were two main jobs - firstly to remove a neglected and potentially dangerous barbed-wire fence from the old golf course area, and secondly to continue felling the non-native and invasive laurel from the woods.  We split into sub-teams and Andy instructed each on the finer points of these tasks.    The fence-removers set about donning safety glasses and taking bolt-cutters and other specialist tools to enable safe removal of the barbed-wire from the fence posts.  The wire was somewhat entangled around shrubs and bushes in the vicinity, thus loppers were also employed to set it free, before winding it up, ready for transporting away.  Next, the fence posts were removed.  Some of these could simply be pulled up, while others required digging out with spades. Meanwhile, the other group had plenty to ke...