Clearing the Orchard bank
Last Fromebridge Friday of the year with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, and we continue to work on the fence line that will protect the riparian bank from grazing cattle. This will enable water voles to burrow and do their thing undisturbed.
While the others worked on the bramble in the main grassland, I took the brush cutter into the orchard to clear the ground for the fencing in the new year. I had done part of this earlier in the year, and Mike also had a go, but we’ve changed strategy now and want to put a fence all along the bottom of the orchard 5m in from the canal.
I hit a major snag early on when I uncovered an old but hidden habitat pile in the bramble. It’s too big to move, and that’s not a good idea anyway. So instead I cut all the way around it, and we can move parts of it to allow the fence in. After a while it will scrub up and hide again, but we can add to it in the meantime.
So just before morning coffee, I finished the right hand end, going back to a thick hawthorn area which will have to be done with hand tools, but is probably a good place to start the fence.
After some delicious cake from Suzi and Imogen, I tackled the other side. This was pretty straightforward, but there was just loads of it, mostly above head height. Just before lunch I completed the stretch and it’s now possible to walk from one end of the bank to the other.
The clippings will need removing, and there’s arisings from a recent willow pollard, but we can tackle that groundwork in the new year.
After lunch, it was tidy up mode for the main grassland, moving the cut bramble to the habitat pile there. We managed to get back to the car park before the heavy rain came in, on cue, at around 2.30pm.
