Abingdon Green Gym Blog

Due to the ongoing Covid 19 situation and the current Tier 4 restrictions in Oxfordshire, it is with regret that we have made the decision to cancel all our forthcoming sessions until further notice. Stay safe and we hope to see everyone again as soon as circumstances permit.

There was a depleted team this Saturday owing to the limited amount of volunteers permitted to work on the BBOWT site at Dry Sandford Pit. So rather than waste the enthusiasm on turning down our devoted members, one of our leaders Eleanor kindly volunteered to take and surplus to Abingdon Southern town park and do some tidying up. This resulted in seven of us going to dry Sandford. The weather was fine but chilly which is always a good excuse to work up a sweat before refreshment break. The task was basically to continue with the same job we were doing last time; to clear the area of scrub and brambles below the sand bank, containing the cliff face which exposing the strata layer of marine fossils. The area was once a sea bed, millions of years ago. What we lost in numbers, we made up with two scythers, Adrian and Sally - who cut a swath through the scrub, whilst the other five - Graham, Colin, Lesley and myself followed up with cutting down larger bushes and shrubs too big for the scy...

We were quite a small group for this session, compared to the previous two Saturdays. We met in the car park and walked along to the site. It was a beautiful day, though cold, with blue sky and sunshine for once. We were working under the direction of Steph and her assistant, Holly, from Natural England. We split into two groups as there were two main tasks - to transport the reeds cut by the Friday volunteer group to the causeway across the water, to be spread along it, making it stronger and safer to walk on and to do some coppicing in the woods. We cleared the nearest heaps of reeds quite quickly, then had to move on to the heaps in the fen itself. These were trickier to get to as it was hard to see the depth and we were in danger of getting a wellyful of water but we made it and soon got into a rhythm, with Graham and me bag filling, new member Colin dragging the bags and Kevin spreading them along the causeway. Meanwhile the sawing and lopping was going on in the woods and the har...