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Making a Mess…
Published: March 2010
Sometimes it is an inevitable consequence that to achieve a goal you have to make a bit of a mess. The old saying about breaking eggs to make an omelette is very true here at the moment as we clear silt from the section of Robin’s Brook below the first lake. It is essential that we complete this before the hard path is built as we would ruin the path if we were to do it later.
The silt, 30 years worth, was reducing the flow of water in the brook and we had noticed a marked decline in water quality and wildlife. Once we knew we were successful with the HLF bid we were also committed to clearing the brook.
The window to achieve this is very small as we have to consider the thousands of common toads that use it for breeding. The toads return in late February or early March and lay their strings of spawn in the margins, the tadpoles then spread out along the brook to emerge as tiny toads in the summer.
Our plan is to drop the silt on the bank so that wildlife has a bit of a chance to wriggle back into the water and then when the new path is constructed the silt, by then hopefully slightly drier, will be cleared up at the same time as the construction. We need to do the first section next to the brook up to the Honywood Oak first so that the buggy has somewhere to run.
All in all rather a mess but in a good cause…..