Well what a difference a week makes. Last week a few of the hardier amongst us attended the work party although I know of a few who started out and abandoned partway there. This week even though we had thunder and lightening and some fairly heavy rain the turnout was brilliant – well into double figures. As for me – I was at Twickenham yesterday to watch the EDF final where the Welsh side The Ospreys gave the English side The Leicester Tigers a good seeing to. I was there on a hospitality package and a few lemonades were had. This morning I was a little jaded but decided that the least I could do was provide a few burgers etc. for the workers.

I got up to Hurston Lane at about 10.45 and was astounded to find the car park absolutely full and I had to park outside the gate. Of course just as I arrived the heavens opened and we had a few flashes of lightening and cracks of thunder which sent at least one guy scurrying for the safety of his car. He later explained that he is quite happy being outside in any conditions apart from lightening following a couple of near misses, once when very young and once while sea fishing.

I got all the stuff out of my car and set up my brolley over the BBQ and fired it up. Whilst waiting for the thing to get going I took a wander down to see exactly what was happening – what a sight there were weed rakes going into the carp lake all along the bank and a good load of weed was coming out. I managed to catch a glimpse (and a picture) of ‘The Beast’ the rake that Vince had made up. This consists of a length of scaffold tube with barbed wire wrapped round it and chains welded onto the ends. These are connected to lengths of rope so that it can be pulled either way across the width of the lake. This seemed to be doing a really good job in cutting the weed; we then had Steve Jupp our Fishery Manager and his colleague in the water with a net that pretty much stretched across the lake. They slowly trawled along the lake picking up all the weed that had been cut.

As I arrived I had met Roger who had come to get his waterproofs. Roger is self appointed Bramble Marshal for the top track, we have to keep this clear so vehicles can use it if required and every year Roger seems to end up spending at least a day hacking back the brambles. They really are persistent and have to be cut back every year, I don’t know whether anyone knows of any better way of controlling them, the problems is that they are well established and to take them out by the root would be nigh on impossible.

After last week we had a bit of burning to catch up with and I noticed that Vince seemed to be in charge of the fire, which was roaring away like a ‘good un’, and he managed to get a lot burnt. You will recall that last week I was singularly unsuccessful in keeping the fire going.

Anyway down to my task for the day the BBQ was going (just) strangely it seemed more reluctant to really get going this week than it had in the snow last time out. So the liberal application of some air (fanning the coals with a paper plate) got it to take off and of course it was then really burning away much to quickly – you can never get these things just right when you want to, however I managed to feed all those that were interested (one guy even asked me how much he had to pay!).

We’ve nothing planned next week and then the week after we’re back up at Hurston Lane again on 27th April hopefully we will get as good a turnout again, it really does make a difference when you get plenty of people. Talking to Steve Jupp he thinks that we have probably done the carp pond weed for now but will reserve judgement until a couple of weeks time. We still haven’t managed to get the logs out so that is definitely a task for next time and there is still plenty to burn up. We want to get across onto the island on the match lake and finish the clearing what we started a month or so ago. I think there are also plans to take down a couple of trees on the tench lake – plenty to keep everyone busy.