On a cold and clear Remembrance Sunday, a small but stalwart band of volunteers mustered at the Fishponds for a morning of spinney-clearing and culvert-unclogging.
When only one person had turned up by 10:00, my hopes were beginning to fade but we agreed to start at the narrow end of the spinney and bash nettles until we could bash no more. At least by tackling the thin end first we would be able to show some progress. However, I needn’t have worried. By 10:30, three more willing chaps had appeared and we could really get to work. More help was at hand in the shape of Ross, who kindly nipped back home to lend us his petrol strimmer and a hedge-cutter, and then a neighbour arrived with a set of drain rods with which to have a go at clearing the culvert under the footpath at the playing field end – a job which we were going to try tackling with leaf rakes!
We stopped at 11:00 to observe the two-minute silence and the bugling of The Last Post came floating across the meadow from the church – a poignant moment.
By 13:00, amazingly, we had chopped down all the nettles in the spinney, cleared the culvert of vast quantities of debris, scrubbed the dipping platform at the pond itself and trimmed some of the encroaching sedges, and replaced the log “seat” at the viewpoint in the blackthorn clump. At the beginning of the morning, I never would have believed that we could have managed to get so much work done.
A thousand thanks, as always, to everyone who came and mucked in – literally (Gav & Adrian were up to their knees in it!). It never ceases to amaze me how generous with their time and energy people can be, even on a day as special as Remembrance Sunday. Thank you. Sue.