Author Archive: Richard F

The recipe for successful work parties includes two essential ingredients.  Our old friend ‘the weather’ provided the first of these with five and a half days of dry conditions.  The second ingredient – the correct […]

This month saw a double helping of work party action as the society attempted to make up a little of the time lost due to newts/ground investigations/the virus.  Both events were highly productive and as […]

Welcome to the new work party normal – not so very different from the old normal. The first work party for four months inevitably included large doses of social distancing, mask wearing and sanitising in […]

It is perhaps a newsworthy item in itself that this work party took place at all. Several weeks of more or less continuous heavy rain made life difficult both on and off site. Every part […]

The first work party of the new decade was short in duration and all of the intended tasks were completed in a day and a bit. The main job, the excavation of ten trial holes […]

The weekend began with some unseasonable fun and games with water: the French drain sumps in phase 1A were sealed off and the section was partially watered in preparation for being handed over to CRT […]

This might have been the last full restoration work party of the year but any ‘end of term’ feeling was notable by its absence.  One reason for this was that the volunteers were too busy […]

The additional work party tackled two major tasks both of which had to be finished before the onset of cold weather. These were to transport the material stripped from Phase 1B during the September work […]

This is the third work party in a row which has resulted in a major change in the appearance of the site. This time a substantial effort on Phase 1A saw the bulk of the […]

This work party featured a number of notable ‘firsts’ – the most important being the start of block laying in Phase 1A, and ground breaking in Phase 1B. Once more a large turnout of volunteers […]