A busy week, commencing 21 July

There had already been two abortive attempts to organise another Himalayan Balsam bashing session: the first was called off at short notice due to a forecast of a 90% chance of heavy rain (which in the event came several hours too late), and the second was called off as it was likely to be too close to the intended first full working party of the new cutting season. However, the Balsam plants in question took the opportunity to grow Triffid-like confident of staying un-bashed; indeed they were shameless or, to put it another way, unabashed.

This was too much for our most devoted Balsam bashers, and on Sunday 21^st three of them made their way into the undergrowth. (Thinking about it, why when something is so overgrown is it called ‘undergrowth’?) Only the sound of their cheery voices celebrating another nettle sting and the notice warning all and sundry of the dangers posed by their activities alerted the passing walker to their presence.

Just the flower heads were removed. These are explosive little blighters when the seeds are ripe, which explains their success in spreading so far so quickly, so it is important to get them away from wet ground where they can continue to ripen.

Where it was possible to pull them up, the roots were stacked off the ground to dry out. The job was planned to be a quick grab of the flowering plants but of course it’s difficult to know when to stop, until 1.5 hours later the Bashers had to call it a day in the hot sticky weather, by which time they had cleared a fair amount.

This being a SSSI, we always needed to take direction on managing The Commons from Natural England, and over the years had adapted our working practices to match it. However, their change of requirements, linked to funding, has unfortunately coincided with the change of ownership of the place, so it falls to NWT to try to meet a new, more demanding schedule, with the help of course of us, their on-site volunteers. It was quickly clear that we were going to really struggle to do all the work required in a much more compressed timescale than previously, without running the real risk of alienating and indeed exhausting our loyal band. Accordingly, on Wednesday we met with Kirsty, NWT’s outgoing reserves officer with responsibility for Southrepps Commons, and George, who already runs another little reserve called Cley Marshes, and he will now be keeping an eye on us. I think it’s fair to say our concerns were explored thoroughly, and we came away reassured that they were recognised and solutions will be put in place.

As a result, we now have a cutting timetable:

The first working party will on Sunday 4th August from 9am (the earlier start is to avoid the worst of the heat, as we did last year). Further work parties will then be on alternate Sundays throughout August and September: 18th August; 1st September, 15th September and 29th September.  Further dates will be confirmed later.

On Thursday we were very pleased to meet Emily, NWT’s monitoring officer, who came to see The Common for herself, and to discuss ways in which we can build on the monitoring work we have already been doing. In particular, since 2012 we have been regularly taking photographs from a series of locations, a process called Fixed Point Photography. This started out as a means of documenting the spread of invasive plants such as Alder, Willow, Bulrush and Michaelmas Daisy, and the collection of in excess of 1,500 photos is proving valuable. With Emily’s advice we will now add some more locations and apply a little more scientific rigour to the process. Our meeting was an outdoor one, going from location to location to accurately record their precise place in the world, and inevitably took some time. Naturally, we had picked the hottest day of the year so far to do it, having postponed an earlier attempt due to a downpour. Weather, don’t you just love it?

As well as looking at the Fixed Point Photography, Emily was very taken with the site overall. We had a quick look at School Common, since one of our Fixed Point locations is at Scouts’ Pond, and were very impressed with this rather splendid den.

 Emily is working on which species need monitoring here, and how that should be done. We already have a very comprehensive plant list – the latest one, along with lots of other useful information is available from https://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife-in-norfolk/commons/southrepps-common - and bird sightings are also well catered for, but many other creatures are somewhat below the radar. I suspect there will be some more roles for volunteers here!

Also available from that web page is the information on the Commons’ history that was previously hosted on the now defunct Southrepps Commons Trust, and for anyone interested in our village it is well worth a look.

Finally, a very busy week was topped off on Saturday with NWT having a pitch at the splendid Southrepps Village Bash, which despite an un-called for falling off in the weather was still a great success; hearty congratulations are due to all who organised it and helped on the day, and indeed before it! We can hope that a lot of people were made aware of the existence of an important reserve in our village, and perhaps some will choose to join us as volunteers!