Next dates are:
Sunday 12th February
Saturday 25th February
Wednesday 8th March
Saturday 18th March
Friday 31st March
We had a very good start to our work party year on Wednesday 18th January. Whether it was the promise of winter sunshine or New Year Resolutions kicking into action, a great number of volunteers turned out. Having spent some time in the ditches of No Man’s Meadow, removing excess willow and cleaning out some of the clogging reeds at the end of last year, we turned our attention to the Linnet weir on the opposite side of the path in No Man’s Meadow (NMM). This has been a tangle of dense undergrowth until now; but now you can clearly see that the river Linnet comes in from the town, opposite Linnet ditch and then makes a dog leg at the weir and continues its flow northwards, towards the Lark. The confluence or merging of the two rivers is at the east end of Crankles North and then the combined river flows through the Abbey gardens onto Ram Meadow.
We continued along the Linnet bank towards the Crankles on Saturday 28th January. Sections were cleared leaving further sections untouched in between, to help wildlife adjust to the new environment. As it was a Saturday, even more volunteers were able to make it, so 3 different jobs were going on simultaneously!
The in-river volunteers took out a considerable amount of rubbish from the river channel which was blocking it and others finished off the ditch work from December. If we were on private land, we would be able to make a big bonfire and burn things like bramble cuttings and vegetation, leaving the wood in habitat piles, but as this is a public space, we cannot. So we are hoping the Council will help us and chip some of the unwanted material, there certainly is plenty from years of neglect.
