Brambles

At the work party last Wednesday 27th November we headed up to the top of the pylon field where there is a large patch of brambles to the left of the path. We can't entirely stop them from spreading but by removing the current growth we can hold them back for a while. 

These photos show what we started with.

We took our 'bush' scythes along because they have stronger blades than our 'ditch' scythes. The ditch blades are used for cutting grass while the bush ones are better for tougher vegetation like brambles. We also took some slashers which have a stout blade on the end of a long wooden handle.

Here, Graham is using a slasher to remove some bramble. Not an easy task though because the brambles are spreading through quite long grass which was wet after a lot of earlier rain. This wet grass was tangled amongst the brambles making cutting them down difficult and hard work.

Graham gets some assistance from Alan R with his scythe. 

Erika and Eric get stuck into the brambles along with Graham and Alan R. Meanwhile, I was raking up the cut down stuff and taking these photos.

When we'd finished cutting and raking we had a couple of piles of brambly bits and a pretty much clear patch of grass.

We still had some time left before the end of the session and used it to dig out a channel on each side of the steps leading down to the bridge. This will hopefully lead any water runoff away from the steps directly into the stream and make the steps a bit less muddy for visitors and their dogs.