Abingdon Green Gym Blog

 This Saturday was rather special as it marked the first big work party in which we (Abingdon Green Gym) and Sustrans joined forces! Sustrans are a national charity which work to improve the provision for walking, cycling, and wheeling; so whatever people's abilities they can safely use travel routes in order to get healthier, feel better, and protect the planet.  Adrian and some of the Sustrans team had already been out earlier in the week for a preparatory litter pick and to drop letters to the residents of Abingdon in the area we were working. We hope that in hearing about our work and seeing the improvement of the path, residents will feel more empowered to take ownership of the maintenance of their local travel routes. As we are all well aware, it can be a difficult job to try and get local authorities to maintain these routes themselves, so community action is our best bet (and who knows how to show off the value of team work than Abingdon Green Gym!) It was a ...

This Saturday, Abingdon Green Gym were at Kennington Memorial Field, an area of pasture dedicated to the six men from the village who lost their lives in WWII. The KMF is owned by the Oxford Preservation Society, and cattle come to graze the field every summer to promote the species-rich grass it is famous for. The field was starting to look more spring-like at its borders, with lots of mustard-coloured hazel catkins and a sea of pristine snowdrops in some of the woods. We were here in our usual scrub-cutting capacity, which meant either scything or lopping the blackthorn and bramble which had sprung up at the edges of the field. The cattle can keep this down themselves when they are in residence but only whilst the shoots are young, so we were there to ensure they wouldn’t chomp down on any woody or spiky outgrowths. Sally and Adrian, our resident scythers, did an excellent job of razing this down (with frequent blade sharpening), while many of us alternated between kneeling and sta...

This week's blog post was written by Eleanor D, the AGG chair:  We met by the Greenkeepers’ buildings for our session at Boundary House Fen. The temperature had begun to rise after an overnight frost and the sky was bright and sunny. Adrian had parked at the side of the road near the fen and unloaded the tools so for once we didn’t have anything to carry as we made our way along the hedge at the edge of the course. Once there, we carried the tools across the fen, to where Rod d’Ayala was waiting to tell us  our tasks. There was a little raking to do but most of the vegetation had been raked into heaps so most people set to work piling it into drag bags and on to drag sheets and pitchforks and transporting to the bays which we had cut into the boundary hedge last time. Rod obligingly jumped on the heaps to compress them so we could pile more on top After the break we moved to the far edge of the fen where the scythers set to work cutting down more reeds, which we raked up and t...

We had a lovely large group of volunteers for our session at the Ock River Path in Abingdon this Saturday! The weather was a little chilly and windy, but along the sheltered path it was rather pleasant in the winter sun. Our main tasks for the day, as explained by session leader Eleanor D., were litter picking and felled-branch sawing.  Our litter picking team were particularly successful and we managed to collect a whole trolley full of rubbish and recycling! Other volunteers valiantly sawed up larger branches to distribute in nature piles, and yet more managed to clear one of the bridges of moss.  We also took part in the RSPB's #BigGardenBirdWatch for an hour at the end of the session, and managed to spot:  x1 woodpecker  x7 wood pigeons  x6 gold-finches (not counting the sadly deceased one we found) x2 mallard ducks x1 magpie x1 robin (who checked up on me every now and then) x3 great tits x10 blue tits 

This week's blog post was written by AGG chair, Eleanor D., and accompanied with photos by volunteer (and former chair) Kevin!  This Saturday’s session was at Hinksey Heights Nature Reserve, where we have been several times before. Having found odd places to park along the roadside, the golf club car park being full, we gathered together so John Brimble, the landowner, could outline the tasks that needed to be done. John is in the process of creating and extending this nature reserve with the help of volunteers, which include a lake, a calcareous fen, woodland, hedgerows and meadows.  The tasks were to cut back brambles at the entrance to the footpath, widen the footpath, open up a new pathway and fill in a gap with a dead hedge. We split up into groups to start work. The weather was dull and cloudy but dry and not too cold and the work kept us  warm anyway. By tea break time the new pathway was open and the dead hedge was almost complete. The second part of the morning w...

This Saturday, Abingdon Green Gym were out in force at Dry Sandford Pit. It was a very frosty and foggy morning when we met in the Dry Sandford carpark, and we were all keen to get started to that our Green Gym fleeces, as well as our fingers, didn’t start to seize up! Ably led by session leader Sally, who gave us a quick task and safety briefing, we donned high-viz jackets (on account of the fog) and headed down to our ‘camp site’ which looked over the beautiful reed bed where the cattle graze in the summer. The main tasks for the day were a) to move a pile of general cuttings over to one of the nature piles deeper into the reserve, and b) to make a fence from the cuttings which the week-day volunteer team had made. Making the fence was a team effort, and involved: ·         Selecting the girthier and longer branches from the pile which could be whittled into stakes. Mags and Rosie selected these, and then made sure to lop off any sticky-outy bits b...