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