Hot and sticky, so they got stuck in

This bunking off lark is now officially entrenched. Once again your usual (or should that now be ‘occasional’?) correspondent having something else to do on working party Sunday, it falls to our now increasingly usual correspondent Julie to magnificently rise to the blogging challenge, with an introductory paragraph from Team Leader Kevin:

As usually happens a small team had turned out earlier in the week to carry out a pre cut and prepare the winching site. This allowed the volunteers on Sunday to get straight on with the job of clearing the cut reeds and grass.

Sunday turned out to be a very warm morning and twelve hardy souls turned out to clear as much as they could on the area near Warren Road. It soon turned from warm to hot but our leader for today put his back into it and led by example.

He did have help of course...

As usual, the coffee, tea and biscuits were most welcome at the halfway stage...

Then it was back to work again...

The loads today were big but reasonably light, but still required some effort to manoeuvre onto the heaps...

This can be a great spectator sport .... though our spectator here (other than me) was actually fleeing the scene having nearly had the load tipped onto her! Health and Safety worked well in the event!

 It’s not all hard work though... there is always time to catch up on the week’s events while walking the filled sheets to the dumping ground...the winch rope is 100m long, but I am glad to say you don’t have to be Usain Bolt to keep up with it!

 It was a day for wildlife today....we saw red kites and shrews...if our usual blogger were in attendance he would have some Shakespearean quote about taming the latter I am sure! However, all I managed was to capture on camera a friendly frog who was happy to pose for a picture!

 It was a great morning's work, with volunteers staying over the two hours to finish as much as they could, despite being told that it could be left for another time!

NWT have gained a lovely Common and some fantastic volunteers.

Here is Team Leader Kevin’s message of thanks:

Dear All,

A big thank you goes out to the volunteers who turned out today and threw themselves into clearing the area around Warren Road. Despite the hot and sticky conditions and with the sun beating down, they manfully and womanfully kept their spirits up and stuck to the task. They even went beyond the allotted time - such was their desire to clear as much as they could.

Once again a big thank you. We hope to see you in a fortnight's time.

Kevin

Dig the Pit!

The great day arrived last week, when contractors moved in with big shiny yellow machines to dig out The Pit. Pit Common is one of the five sites comprising NWT Southrepps Commons, and despite the care and attention lavished on it in the past by Southrepps Commons Trust, Nature, in the form of Greater Reedmace, as the botanists know it, or Bulrushes to the rest of us, had completely choked it.

In earlier times, when there was still a creditable pond there, valiant efforts had been made to control the invading plants…

… but eventually defeat had to be conceded. It was with great relief that SCT could hand this problem over to Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which has quickly risen to the challenge. The strategy was to go back to square one: dig out the sludge accumulated since the last overhaul a decade or so ago, down to the clay bottom, trying not to go beyond. As well as the Reedmace, Common Reed had multiplied too much, and that pernicious invader Crassula helmsii had also seen fit to join the party. The effect of all this was that the pond had become dry throughout much of the year, and was no longer suitable for the wildlife that used to thrive there. It had also lost its attractive appearance.

Thanks are due to Team Leader Kevin for many of these pictures. Here is one of the diggers at work:

And here is one at rest:

The keen-eyed reader will have spotted a notice in these pictures. This was put there by NWT to warn the public about the presence of heavy machinery and to explain what the work is trying to achieve. (Is it permissible at this point to say this was heavy plant removing some slightly less heavy plants? No – Ed.)

The Pit can be enjoyed from the grassy area behind it, graced by two benches, but also from the road. That has been harder to appreciate recently, as so much vegetation had grown up at the roadside edge. Sporadic assaults on it with loppers, sickles, billhooks and suchlike medieval weaponry had been made, but the stuff will keep growing back and blocking the view. A JCB however, can sort it out in no time:

As mentioned above, the contractors were asked to go down to the clay bottom, but no further. It is now clear that some of the unwanted rhizomes are growing up through the clay, so some thought may need to be given to how they can be removed, if at all.

It is well understood that this is not a one-off job: the plants will recover, and in time choke the pond again, so fans of big yellow diggers will get another sighting in another decade or so.  Meanwhile, here is how it looks at the roadside at the time of writing. All it needs now is some water!

 Southrepps Commons Volunteers are not yet allowed to play about with big shiny yellow diggers, but their work continues nonetheless. The next working party is on Sunday 15^th, but as usual some preparatory work was necessary, so that that the eager volunteers can get straight down to work in the dim dawn light at 9.00 am. Your correspondent again has a note saying he can’t come to that fiesta of fun, but did manage to fall out of bed in time to help with the preparation session, which was unusually held almost a week before the main event, rather than the customary Saturday. Such a shame he was unaware that the start time had been moved forward an hour, but hey ho, it’s quite nice to turn up just in time to help with the clearing up and the convivial cup of tea and biscuit. 

Summer one day, autumn the next

Another two weeks have gone by since the last working party, but in the meantime the team leaders met with our two principal contacts with NWT on 22^nd, to talk through issues around the cutting programme. The Countryside Stewardship funding arrangement is the successor to the Higher Level Stewardship scheme, our bit of which expired last autumn. It turns out that CS is widely criticised for its inflexibility, and the penalties for not keeping to the imposed schedule can be severe. Of most immediate relevance is the deadline of 30^th September for the completion of the cutting of the central part of the Common; this is required in order to continue to knock back the reeds which are encroaching into that valuable species-rich patch. The balancing act is to meet that target whilst minimising as much as possible the impact on the glorious flowering plants there – in particular, Grass of Parnassus, Devil’s Bit Scabious and Eyebright. We have already cut back as much of the reeds as possible, and pulled by hand those growing amongst the aforementioned flowers; the final cut will be left to as close to the end of September as can be managed, to give the plants the best chance of setting seed. And, of course, a healthy and diverse plant community leads to a rich diversity of insects and other invertebrates, and they in turn are bird food.

The next challenge will be the areas to the north of the Beck, beside Warren Road. We cut each half on alternate years, and this year it is the turn of the section closer to Lower Street, known imaginatively as Area A. It is a massive tangle of vegetation, beautifully rich in plant life, but also very hard work to deal with, especially in warm weather. It, and the even more excitingly named Area B on the other side of the boardwalk, is becoming dominated by an invasive garden escapee, Michaelmas Daisy, which along with the spreading reeds will also be cut on Area B. This is all a lot of work for our magnificent volunteers in a shortened period of time, and it is likely that NWT will need to provide extra assistance if the deadline is to be hit.

The boardwalk is needing increasing amounts of maintenance and repairs, and we were pleased to learn that there is a team within NWT with considerable expertise, which can be drawn on if the need arises.

Another big job to be undertaken by a contractor on NWT’s behalf is the restoration of The Pit, which should be dug out in the next few weeks. We can then all look forward to it looking like a pond again.

The next working party was on Sunday 1^st September – the first day of meteorological autumn apparently, but still pretty warm after the early morning freshness. Your increasingly irregular correspondent having bunked off again, it fell to Team Leader Julie to gamely pick up the blogging baton:

Six of us took part in Saturday’s preparations for Sunday’s full working party. There was some deliberation as to what we were to do.....

Anyway, once agreed, the remaining reed in the corner of Area G was soon dispatched ready to be moved on Sunday.

 We obviously left the wildflower patch that Margaret has lovingly hand reeded and which now is full of Devils Bit Scabious and Grass of Parnassus...

Area A met us with a huge area of Michaelmas Daisy which seems to have almost shot up and spread overnight..

So it was decided that this had to go first in this area. So Grizzly was put to work tackling this, whilst the rest of us cut back the scrub around the preferred winch site. The result was a clear winch site

and lots of reed and daisy to be stacked by Sunday’s willing volunteers...

For the main event on Sunday, sixteen willing volunteers turned out in the glorious sunshine. Warm enough to be working in, but not so hot as past sessions have been.

The majority set to clearing the heaps of vegetation cut by Grizzly yesterday... unfortunately the two team leaders had failed to put a key piece of winch equipment in the wheelbarrow, so sheets were hand pulled until someone made the journey back to the container to collect the missing equipment (whoops - still learning - there is a lot to remember you know!)....

A few people were dispatched to clear the small amount of reed left on Area G (again all by hand)..

Soon, however, normal service was resumed...

..including people falling in a heap on the piles of reed in the attempts stack the vegetation ...

It takes a lot of effort to build these heaps especially when the sheet has gone and you are desperately trying to stop it all rolling back down again..

We were progressing very well by tea break, so on the restart, a few of us took to cutting back more scrub in preparation for later weeks’ winch sites..

All in all it was an excellent mornings work...Grizzly got a little excited by its run out today and opted to throw itself partially off the boardwalk by the container leaving its ‘handler’ hanging on tight to prevent both wheels going down....it was all hands on deck really so no photos I am afraid..but a team effort meant it was recovered and safely put away before it could wreak more havoc!!