Sunday 30 November 2014

Next Steps

There are a few areas that we are considering working on. First, our amazing groundwork buddy, Chris, is going to find out who owns the boundaries to either side of the path. At the moment, one entrance to the greenway is lined with ugly, wobbly and dangerous sheets of corrugated iron. We'd like to replace these with something safer and more attractive.



In our first work party, we cleared some of the stream to the west of the path. Next time, we'll may look to maintain the banks and area surrounding this area of the stream and perhaps even introduce more diversity into the fauna.


We're not going to be meeting now until the new year, but check out our Facebook page to see what is going on.

First small steps

Today marked our first opportunity to get going with the Broadlands Valley Greenway Project. We had a two hour slot, in which with had a few main jobs.

First, we wanted to clear the path of leaf litter. As winter is fast approaching, the frosty mornings will make any leaf mulch into a slippery death-trap. As this path is used by families on their way to and from school and Portswood Rec, safety is a large focus of what we'll be doing. Also, by maintaining the paths, the seem wider and more accessible.



The path can be quite dark and oppressive in places, so one way to combat this is by removing some of the overhanging branches. Andy, obviously relishing the opportunity to use the long saws, got on with this job.


One of the most attractive features in the Broadlands Valley is the stream. Due to the pernicious brambles, a lot of it was covered. So another task was to clear this. Thomas and some of the kids tackled this job.

Where's the stream?


We've found it!
There was about a dozen of us over all, five of them being children (although a lot of the adults fall into the big kids category). The kids were troupers, enthusiastic about any task we got them involved with. They were happy picking litter or cutting brambles in the stream.

We were all impressed with the progress we made in such a short time. This has definitely given us a better idea of what can be achieve and what needs doing.

For more images, see our Facebook page.