Mid gripple crisis

The regular friday fencing team from the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust met up to continue the grassland fence. The rain has been extraordinarily heavy over the last few days, so there was no chance of driving the truck into the reserve. So, the first part of the morning was walking in the equipment to site.

We started with the gripple tightening that we had loosely erected at the end of last week.

Unfortunately, we over tightened them with the tool and the tension posts at either end became dislodged in the wet ground. And we didn’t have the gripple release tool, so we had to pull out the pins from the tension post and start again.

However, we now have the technique nailed – hand tighten the gripples until it stands almost upright and then attach the nadgers to hold everything in place.

Elsewhere, the rest of the team got the remaining fence posts driven in and the last of the scrub cleared. So wiring is the main task left on this section of the reserve.