Released On 30th Sep 2025

September 2025 – James Waterfall – Monday Volunteer & Wildlife Surveyor

The Monday volunteering group has been active around the Country Park on each Monday apart from August Bank Holiday Monday. Despite “heatwave” declarations Mondays were well supported with the team appreciative of the country park shade on offer. Matt & Richard selected tasks sensitive to the conditions when appropriate.

Attendees averaged seven volunteers per session under the overall direction of Matt and Richard.

Tasks using manual tools only have seen further significant contributions to the upkeep of the parkland and the more visible areas particularly the children’s play area, no dogs zone, wildlife and community orchard areas at Pen Hill.

Various paths and tracks across the park areas required summer growth cut back so as to maintain a safe passage width for park users.

The play area rubber protection matting turf overgrowth was removed to fully expose the cushioned potential fall area. Robust effort was required to release and remove the turf that had established over the years. Play equipment and paths were cleared of sand and soil build up.

The Wildlife Garden and community orchard at Pen Hill were cleared of dominant weed growth and nutrient bearing grass cuttings to encourage nectar bearing plants to further establish themselves.

Latter tasks included a start on removing “wooded” plant intrusions on the former ski centre car park in preparation for development into a potential community craft learning facility.

The group continued its happy spirit of working often developing “slogan” motivators to maintain performance!!! For this period the call of “Keep Cutting” and “keep shovelling” have again been regular shouts. Energy was maintained with a well earned “Ice Cream” break (private funds) on occasion.

An interesting aside is that of the Lionesses Euros achievements providing inspiration for one of the group who sometimes struggled to contribute for the whole 2 hour session. Upon arriving for a session fully motivated after the Euros victory the team member advised that they would keep going for the full 2 hours. The Lionesses attitude of “never give up” was referenced as having influenced additional motivation to keep going until the end!!!

Opportunities to point out natures beauty have also continued with some good sightings of birds, butterflies and fish being witnessed. A walk myself on Summerhouse Hill recently enabled the sighting of 7 Common Blue ( not so common ) and a Small Copper to be added to UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) “irecord” database.