Abingdon Green Gym Blog

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...

This week's blog was written by noble and esteemed session leader, Kevin: We were met by Tristan from Earth trust who manage the site with the help of various volunteer groups. Parking can be an issue near this lake as it is popular with dog walkers, joggers, bird watchers and families (but they are in the process of expanding the area for parking bays soon). Lucky enough for us, Tristan had access to the compound where we had ample space to our cars, although it was good to see about half of the team had either biked there or even walked. Once camp established, were greeted by a cacophony of the wild bird calls from the lake, spring being prime time for mating etc. The tasks for the morning work-out were to open up the bank side views of the lake, clear away brambles, reeds, and young shrubs that have grown up over the passed year, plus a bit of litter picking. Tristan had already been around and sprayed marked areas where he wanted us to clear. It was a lovely sunny morning makin...

This week's blog post was written by Abingdon Green Gym chair, Eleanor D., and the accompanying photos were kindly provided by Michele, Kevin, and Nicky!  This Saturday’s session was at Pinkhill Meadow Nature Reserve on the far side of Farmoor Reservoir, working under the direction of Kate Thatcher of Thames Water.  We met in the reservoir car park and drove in convoy across the central causeway with the wind whipping up waves on the water to either side. After parking, we made our way to the area where we were going to work. Pinkhill Meadow is a wetland site with boardwalks and hides, and is very popular with bird watchers. Kate led us to an area not normally open to the public, where our tasks were  to cut and stack reeds and to cut down sprouting willow. The scythers set to work while the willow cutters had to negotiate an area of thick gloopy mud to get to the willows. We set to work and found the sawing knives (there is probably a proper word for them), very useful f...