Another busy week in Edinburgh and after last weeks floods it was an absolute scorcher!
On Tuesday we were off to Ravelston Woods for a multitude of tasks. Firstly, clearing out a disused quarry area of litter of varying sizes. Secondly the digging out of Japanese Knotweed, and finally, a spot of fence repair. All good fun!
In the quarry as well as the expected smaller rubbish we found such items as a mattress, wheelbarrow – sans wheel- and a TV, which begs the question; who hauls a mattress off a car, up a hill and through a woodland?! The knotweed removal proved tricky as it was growing smack bang in the middle of a gorse thicket, however plenty of free raspberries and gooseberries made up for the numerous cuts and scratches.The fence team were able to take advantage of the glorious sunshine as they were outside of the woods, this made the task of retensioning the steel wire all the more pleasant.
As is often the case with BTCV volunteers, when you stop for lunch by a deserted childrens play area, complete with swing set, football pitch and basketball courts, it isnt long before all sense of maturity melts away and competitions start to see ‘who can get higher on the swing’ and ‘friendly’ and ‘non contact’ football games are begun, special mention to Rachel who by her own admission ‘isn’t desgined with football in mind’ and had some sort of fixation with hitting the right hand post from six yards, not bad at basketball though! (Oi! its hard to play in steel-toe caps!!!)
In the afternoon, with all the knotweed taken care of, we split into two groups; one to finish the fencing and the second to go off on a litter pick, though as the afternoon wore on the litter pickers came back with very little, turns out Ravelston woods are a very clean place, which gave some people the oppurtunity to bask in the sunshine until it was time to leave.
On Wednesday we took a pleasant trip down to the River Almond at Cramond. The day’s job was to further cut up some pre-cut cherry laurel bushes and have a nice big fire to ‘get rid of the lot’. First challenge of the day was to find the place to park and then find somewhere to have the fire. Unfortunately the former was not overly near the latter – so quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing went on. The fire site was also (annoyingly) near the path and also under a canopy – so quite difficult conditions! Alan and Phil started the fire while the rest of us started cutting the huge mounds of laurel. By lunchtime there was a roaring fire, and raising the temperature of an already hot day!
Most spent lunch in the sunshine (except Phil, whom we left to guard the fire – stoping small children and dogs from falling in etc etc); watching the planes coming in to land, and the ducks (and heron!) on the river. Sarah provided a quiz – which resulted in a draw, even though Douglas (fount of all knowledge) was in one of the teams. After lunch, it was discover that we actually needed water for the fire, (and that we had neglected to actually FILL the water carriers that we had brought with us); so Neasa and I set off to the river to fill them. This was somewhat perilous…and a fair amount of walking on water was required.
So then half the group went back to the fire site, to slash and burn; while I took Douglas, Sarah and Willie down to the beach to have a tackle with some Japanese rose. It was quite a job trying to find the stuff (after all we had a fair shot at it last year); and much entertainment followed attempting to pull out all the roots. Come 2 o’clock, I lead a nature walk up river (again leaving Phil and Thomas with the fire). Where upon we found many interesting plants and invasive species and learnt how to identify them (yes, I agree touch is probably not the best method of identifying the hogweeds….). So it was a nice walk in the sunshine. Returned to the fire, more to-ing and fro-ing to the river for water, and finally left the site.
On Thursday we went out to Butterdean Woods in East Lothian to clear out the drainage ditches that run alongside their nature trail. The ditches had become overgrown with brambles, gorse and other weeds so our entire day was spent with slashers in hand hacking our way down the ditches. On what was another blisteringly hot day we were very thankful to be in the shade of the woods otherwise there would been a lot of red heads and faces by the end of the day. We covered perhaps 100m or so down both sides of the path, which for the amount of material to be slashed back is very good going, and we’ll be back next week hoping to finish the job.
To view photos of past and present projects and our volunteers in action please click here