Dry Sandford Pit - Saturday 4th January 2025

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 Blog by Eleanor, photos by Julio

It was a cold, frosty day when eleven brave Green Gymmers met in the car park of Dry Sandford Pit Nature Reserve for our first session of 2025. Our task was to work on the fen, scything and raking, cutting back sprouting trees, and in some cases, uprooting them with the tree popper. This will help preserve the ecology of this alkaline fen. We set up our encampment on the grass just above the fen and climbed down into it to start our work.

A frosty fen




 We had to take care crossing the areas of water, making sure they were not too deep. The sky was grey and cloudy, with no sunshine to warm us up.

Starting work





Raking




Barbara scything




More raking



Carol carrying cut wood





More work



Our hands and feet were really cold and we were glad of our tea break especially as there were some Christmas goodies to share.

A welcome tea break.




Then it was back to work. Adrian showed no mercy and kept us hard at work until 12.30. We climbed out of the fen and jumped about trying to restore our circulation, waiting for Adrian, the last to stop work.

An opportunist robin





After photo


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