Berkshire Conservation Volunteers

Task Reports for Year 2001 (Apr - Jun) Tasks

McIlroy Park - 24th June - David Fiddes

Another change of venue, but for once not due to foot and mouth disease, saw us spend the hottest Sunday of the year so far in the woods at McIlroys Park. The original task in the grounds of a church in Hartley Witney was cancelled due to a wedding - presumably to prevent a group of conservationists, not the most photogenic of people (at least on task!), ruining the wedding photos!

The reassigned task was to help the Friends of McIlroys Park clear brambles, sycamore and bracken from a group of trees planted in the woods about four years ago. The woods provided good protection from the sun, although the heat eventually became too much for most of us. Five BeC volunteers were able to help a group of Friends and Duke of Edinburghers clear a good area of brambles. The brambles were piled onto dead hedges that the Friends have been building alongside the woodland paths. Phil planted a selection of plants that he'd raided from his garden.

Bartley Heath- 17th June - Mark Clay

This was the last task to be altered due to foot & mouth, as it should have been at Ancells Farm. It was a joyeous day chopping down and burning birch regrowth. On a site this big you would not think you could make an impression, but we did!

Dinton Pastures - 10th June - Neil Frankum

Clearing some more of the bramble alongside the path we created last week, to make way for a wildflower meadow. After a quick pint in the Wheelwright's Arms, we adjourned to Richard's house in Arborfield for a post task BBQ.

Dinton Pastures - 3rd June - Neil Frankum

Creation of a new path through a dense patch of 7 foot high brambles along one of the earth mounds adjacent to the A329(M).

Above - the 7' high bramble
Right - Alasdair tending the fire

Mapledurham Playing Fields - 27th May - Alex Hoenig

Mapledurham Playing Fields are not in Mapledurham, but on the edge of Caversham, however the area does include playing fields, along with some general open recreation land and some woodland. Our task was to build some benches along the edge of the field. One bench was in kit form, and was almost complete by the time I arrived, so I cannot comment on its construction, but I did observe members of the public sitting on it later in the day. Three other benches were built, 2 of a fairly basic design - holes dug in the ground, logs to form the legs of the benches go inthe holes and the holes are then filled in, and the seat is then nailed to the legs.

Each bench required 2 legs - and as is always the case, the area chosen to dig the holes contained 1 inch of topsoil followed by 2 ft of bedrock. But despite this, some fine holes were dug.

Once we had two holes of similar depth, the legs were inserted, and the holes refilled, with some serious tamping to make them firm.

Next came the task of getting it all level. The seat was placed on the legs and checked with a spirit level. Part of this task involved brave volunteers sitting on the unfinished bench to hold everything in place while checks and measurements too place. Once the calculations had been made,Richard and the chainsaw saw to the adjustments.

And finally once a level seat had been obtained, a couple of six inch nails per leg finished off the structure.

Left - Niamh's alternative seat
Right - Richard's Arnie impression

Mark testing the first bench

The bench building team with our first customer testing the bench!

The fourth bench also follow the same hole, leg, seat pattern, but with a slight twist - it was a triangular bench with a tree in the middle - which meant digging holes in a same place as the tree kept its roots. Still, digging through tree roots makes a change from rocks and stones.

The most important part of the day, must be the discovery made during tea break. The jam in "Jam Wagon Wheels" is Strawberry flavoured plum jam!!!! I remember when I was young, and plum jam was plum flavoured - but its good to know that due to the ever advancing march of technology, the young of today need never have to eat plum flavoured plum jam.

And finally, a long but successful day was rounded off with a visit to the Griffin public house for a swift half of shandy. As I have not been a regular on task of late, I'm not really in a position to comment on the politics of the post task drink buying - but Mark buying a round did seem to create some excitement.(Mark actually bought TWO rounds of drinks!!!!! and no, it wasn't April 1st, nor were the rest of us having a mass hallucination)

Dinton Pastures - 20th May

This was our second week in a row spent standing in the waters of Black Swan Lake at Dinton Pastures, trying to perfect the highly skilled task of underwater nailing! We were repairing and reinforcing the wooden telegraph pole revetment along the edge of the lake, with the aim of preventing erosion to the bank, thus protecting the main footpath around the site.

Dinton Pastures - 13th May

A scorchingly hot day in the sun, standing up to our knees in Black Swan Lake, fixing and extending the wooden revetment we installed last year.

This is designed to protect the edge of the lake, and the main path around the site, from erosion.

Lucy, Mark, Phil & Brian holding down one of the floating telegraph poles, waiting for me to stop taking photos and start nailing!

Clayfield Copse - 6th May

A nice sunny day for what was quite a social task as we spent the day working close together (unlike the usual tasks where we are quite spread out), starting with a bit of footpath work, then putting in some wooden posts at the edge of the playing fields to protect a wildflower meadow, and finishing off with putting in some large concrete bollards to stop vehicles coming along the bridleway off of Foxhill Lane.

Dan inspecting one of the holes!

Bluebells in the clearing we made in Blackhouse Wood last year.

29th April - Nettlebed Common

Deja vue - finishing off what we started last week. If I hadn't turned up in the afternoon to relax after running a Half Marathon, the women would have outnumbered the men on this task.

22nd April - Nettlebed Common

A nice sunny day greeted us for our first task at this site for many years. It was really a two part task. We had the job of felling some trees that were growing in a rather large pond, to allow a bit more light into the pond. The other part of the task was removing invading brambles and tree seedlings from a nearby clearing.

The clearing we were removing brambles from.

15th April - Dinton Pastures

This was the first task for six weeks to actually take place where it was supposed to.

Our task was to create about 30' of pathway to replace a railway sleeper bridge that had literally floated away during the floods earlier in the year. As can be seen from the 'before' photos it was a rather wet task!

The first job was to find and retrieve the railway sleepers that had floated away. These were laid in two parallel rows to form the edge of the new path. Richard had to do some industrial scale carpentry using a mattock to complete this first part of the task.

Three volunteers managed to find us despite us working right round the far side of Dinton near the hardest to find entrance to the site, and with the van cunningly hidden under the bridge where Bader Way crosses the River Loddon!

Then came the hard work of backfilling the gap in between with a mixture of gravel, mud, woodchip, and large blocks of concrete.

After thinking we would never finish it at lunchtime, everything came together nicely and we completed what we had set out to do. Simon was going to come back later in the week and put a top layer of gravel down to provide a good surface to walk on.

After task we adjourned to The George which was only about 150m from where we had been working. Here we were joined by a volunteer, (who shall remain nameless) who despite living less than a 10 minute walk away had decided to spend the day in bed.

8th April - ~~Warburg Reserve~~ Kings Meadow

This task was due to a foot and mouth cancellation at the Warburg reserve. We found that we were doing a very different job - underwater tree planting! We were planting along the edge of King's Meadow behind Booker, and mulch matting and woodchipping. A surprising aspect was the two D of E's who were exceedingly keen, and had to be told three times that it was time to go home and that they should stop woodchipping!