Abingdon Ock Path, Saturday 23rd of April 2022

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This week's blog post was written by Abingdon Green Gym Chair, Eleanor D!:

Sixteen of us gathered by the bridge over the weir for our session at the town end of the Ock, where it joins the Thames, and we then made our way to base camp on the woodchip path.

One of the tasks was to renew the path, and the Town Council had left us a pile of woodchip at each end.
The nettles in the area between the woodchip path and the main path were already growing fairly high and threatening to swamp the young trees, so another task was to clear around them. Then, of course, there was litter picking, so some people set off to do that.

When the nettles had been cleared, there were plenty of fallen branches to cut up and put on to habitat piles. We discovered some wild garlic and even a fritillary, which we had planted a few years ago before the lockdown. In the Autumn we used to plant bulbs and rhizomes of early Spring flowers such as wild daffodils, wild garlic, wood anemones and fritillaries, which would flower before the nettles took over. We hope we can do this again this coming Autumn.                      
                                                                                
We continued after the break until the woodchip path was almost finished. However, by this time the woodchip had run out so we decided to finish early.

The Green Gym Team were having so much fun this week they forgot to take photos, but here are a couple to whet your appetite in time for next week's adventures! 

A watchful friend

The finished path! 




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