Sunday 25 September 2011

Dunham Massey 24 Sept 2011


Thanks to Mick for the text and Nathan for the photo
The MNTV group were back at Dunham Massey, continuing the National Trust war of attrition against Rhododendron ponticum. At Dunham, this is only found outside the park in the coverts between the park and grazing for Home Farm. With a large group - seventeen volunteers - quite a lot of rhody was bashed in Headsman's covert and fed onto two fires. As a potential vector for Phytophthorum ramorum (responsible for Sudden Oak Death), the rhododendron is better removed than left. In addition, removing it will allow more wild flowers to return to the covert.


Sunday 18 September 2011

Thurstaston Common 18 Sept 2011

Four volunteers met up at Quarry Bank mill, and car shared to Thurstaston, where we met up with the warden and our colegues from Chester.

The day didn't go entirely according to plan, with some confusion as to which rugby club we were meeting at.

There were other issues which stopped the planned Rhodi bash, leaving us tackling the saplings that were invading open heathland.

We did some usefull work, and after a grey start the sun shone.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Shugborough 3 Sept 2011

Seven volunteers turned out, and shared cars for a trip down the M6 to Shugborough.
We continued the task that we had started last month (21 Aug 2011). When we arrived we found some work had been done in our absence.Once again there a number of waders available, though the last pair belonging to Shugborough (as opposed to "ours") had been put away full of water! - so I didn't bother with them (I wasn't in the water). We had some people in the water pulling the reads and throwing them onto the bank, and some cleaning up the sandstone wall that holds up the "bank" using spades. - (see second photo)
This time I avoided getting completely coated in mud. In fact I found that with the aid of a pitch fork I could transfer the pulled material from where it was thrown on the bank to the pile without getting it on me at all!
This time we were asked to minimise the number of piles of pulled material - so we built two as it was getting to be quite a long walk to the first one by lunch time. The pile in the third photo represents half of the material we removed this time. With the group in the background tucking in to some well earned cake.The final photo is from the same view point as the first, and shows what we have done as well as the muddy marks on the grass which we are told will wash off with the first rain.

Sunday 4 September 2011

Hare Hill 4 Sept 2011

trench before work water flowing above drainSix of our volunteers met up with two locals, and another group - the Sale and Altrincham conservation volunteers and spent the day in the parkland surrounding Hare Hill Garden.

We were returning to a land drain that we had previously visited I think in May 2009 - though as this drain was is particularly deep and very well blocked it more or less defeated us on that occasion. This time a local farmer had been recruited to remove the top 4 feet or so of soil. This had created a series of trenches along the line of the drain. So in theory we only had to dig down one to two feet - naturally we discovered the drain was not straight and it dissappeared out of the side of the trench so we did have to dig one pit to the full depth by hand.

In the first photgraph - you can see water flowing along the base of the trench this is above the level of the drain. It then dispears into a section of drain that wasn't completely blocked by mud. Looking the otherway in the second photo a little later (the stones flat in the mud are where the gentleman was standing in the first photo) - the drain has been uncovered, opened, and cleaned out. The trench has also been made wider to get at more of the drain. trench during lunch break water flowing in drainStanding in the trench is a T bar that allows you to find the drain without digging it up - so long as it isn't too deep, and behind the bucket is a hand dug pit that allowed us to get at the next blockage a little further downstream.

By the end of the day water was flowing along the entire section (these photos only show about 1/5 of the length uncovered). Though there was still a partial blockage under the piles of grass covered soil in the background of the second photo.