BOUGHTON FEN WORKING PARTY - SUNDAY 20TH JANUARY 2008

A report on the first Boughton Fen working party

Having made preparations for our first fen working party on Sunday 20th January, would anyone turn up?

We were expecting a few, but with the awful weather forecast, it was difficult to know just who would come along. At 10.00am a couple of people arrived, and Allan Hale and I went down the road to see if the West Norfolk Conservation Volunteers had come along the Eastmoor Road - nobody to be seen!!. We looked back from whence we came to see that Keith was running down the road, waving at us to come back up the Boughton Road.

We returned to find a gathering of people, all tooled up and ready for action.

Off we went, over the ditch into the grassy higher area of the fen, and down to the scrub on the edge of the water and reeds. Work started with a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. Who needs expensive team building exercises? Down came scrubby areas and a bonfire was made. This was carefully tended by John of the Conservation Volunteers (and he did cook their spuds in it later in the afternoon) , whilst his cohorts worked away further down the site.

What seemed an evergrowing team continued working, virtually non stop until the rain set in at about 1.45 pm, when all but the volunteers called it a day.

The gathering ended up with a total of 29 people, made up of six West Norfolk Conservation Volunteers and 23 Boughton Folk including four closely supervised little helpers. (Allan is an Honorary Boughtonian where the fen in concerned).

After all that, we are going to do it again on Sunday 2nd March at 10.00am, hopefully with as many as possible of the January team, Conservation Volunteers, and anyone else who would like to help.

Thank you to everyone who came along. It was a tremendous effort, and a fabulous turnout. Thanks also to Will Chapman for allowing us access along his headland to get to the part of the fen we were clearing.

Mark Pogmore