Wet windrows and leaping Alpacas

 

Beguiled perhaps by what turned out to be an extravagantly optimistic weather forecast, 24 plucky volunteers turned up for another punishing encounter with the windrows of cut grass waiting to be shifted to the edge of Area A. Including yet another very welcome first-timer, this magnificent turnout is the biggest yet this year, and between us we put in a stunning 50 hours of work on Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s behalf!

As indicated, the weather was expected to be dry if uninspiring, leading many of our number to be ill-prepared for the precipitation, which kept changing from drizzle to quite heavy rain and back again.

With the temperature unseasonably warm, but wet-weather gear involved, the comfort factor was low, but through gritted teeth we still seemed to enjoy (is that how you spell endure?) the experience. The rain even almost stopped at the half-time break.

Natural England’s deadline for the cutting of this section was the end of September, so in order to meet that Grizzly driver Old Hand John and New Hand Dave finished the job on the last day possible, with Team Leader Margaret gamely creating the windrows (or rickles).

The idea of windrows is that they are left for a while to dry, which is fine, so long as the weather is fine. The intervening days had not been exclusively balmy however; indeed they had often been very wet. The inevitable consequence was of course that the material was soaked and heavy, but the pitchforking crew went at it with a will.

With so many people to help, all four drag sheets were in constant use, and there was scope for brush cutting and scrub trimming too, as well as grass mowing at The Pit. As regular readers of this blog will be all too aware, the main work consists of transferring the cut stuff onto a drag sheet

The sheet is then winched to the day’s dumping site…

…and then the winch is used to turn the sheet over (with a little manual help), resulting in a large heap for decomposition over the next few months.

This is quite a large area to clear, with limited options for dumping sites, so the heap is inevitably a big one, until it rots down. The doughty winch crew can still just be seen behind it:

A cynical reader (of which there are surely none of this blog) might wonder if there has been a trick with perspective here, and the people are a considerable distance back from the heap, or perhaps they are kneeling, or standing in a hole, but put that cynicism aside dear reader; this is a true and accurate reflection of the situation. Fortunately, we had the foresight to leave enough space for their escape at the close of play.

Once the work is done and the weary volunteers have trudged off home, the tools must still be returned to the storage container. Our famous little green cart is used for this purpose, but this time it was caught up in a small Camelid-related drama, as related by Team Leader Julie:

“Unfortunately I didn’t feel I could get my phone out when we met the Alpacas just past the Beck. We had a fully laden trolley which we couldn’t lift off the boardwalk or reverse back over the Beck … that would have been a disaster!

So they tried taking the Alpacas off the boardwalk but they were not keen - very sensible animals knew it wasn’t good ground!!

We eventually had to pull the trolley over to the very edge of the boardwalk and they managed to squeeze the Alpacas past! Only one fell off and he/she seemed none the worse for wear thank goodness.”

Loyal reader Brenda tells me that she was particularly taken with Julie’s lovely photos of Grass of Parnassus flowers in the previous couple of postings: this is a useful reminder that these beautiful and rare flowers are still present, so if you haven’t visited the Common recently, now is a good time to do so. Plenty of these and other plants can be readily seen from the boardwalk.

 Here is Team Leader Julie’s message of thanks:

Hello all

Thank you to the wonderful group of volunteers who turned out this morning and braved the rain. It wasn't the best weather for the job in hand. I lost count of the times I got wet and then dried out again throughout the session!

However, despite the weather we achieved a great deal. The largest group cleared cut reed from the top of Area A and created more 'rickles' (loosely piled heaps) of reed lower down Area A to aid clearance in the next session in two weeks’ time.

However, we also had smaller teams cutting back overgrown shrubs at the edge of the boardwalk near to the bridge over the Beck and brushcutting and sweeping the boardwalk from Bradfield Road around to the Central Area. Last, but definitely not least, one of our regular Pit Mowing volunteers mowed the grass around the Pit. 

An extraordinary effort from everyone today and we cannot tell you how grateful we are for your efforts. What a team!

We usually change our start time to 10am once the clocks change - and we had a quick vote at 'coffee time' and it was a resounding "Yes" to the later start time from the next session!

Regards, Julie (for the Team Leaders)