Rake it til you Make it

14 Goodgymers helped their local community in Oxford
Isabella Collins
Anwen Greenaway
Ruth
Sarah
Ben Foster
Venetia Lipscombe
Alex
Zoe
Dan
Trevor
Jocasta Patel
Holly
Jessy McCabe
1 / 20
Oxford

Saturday 8th May 2021

Credits
Anwen Greenaway
Anwen Greenaway

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Report written by Anwen Greenaway

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We had unfinished business at Boundary Brook Nature Park, and that will just not do. 2.5 weeks ago we started building gravel paths through the Nature Park, but we ran out of both gravel and time and so had to leave the paths unfinished. Today it was time to return to the newly-replenished gravel heap to see how much we could achieve with the luxury of a 2 hour work window.

Oxford Urban Wildlife Group had used all their allotment contacts to acquire enough wheelbarrows for 14 GoodGymmers, so with 8 wheelbarrows moving in convoy, and an ace shovelling team, we were able to keep an almost constant flow of gravel moving through the Nature Park and getting deposited at Pete and Helen's feet for raking and spreading into a smooth(ish) pathway. Our experience of wheelbarrows in the last week or so has lead us to the realisation that not all wheelbarrows are created equal: Venetia retired the one with the wonky wheel, Dan declared the one without a wheel frame unfit for gravel tasks, and 1.5 hours in we discovered that there is such a thing as a E-Barrow - although using one would probably disqualify us from calling it a GoodGYM task.

In total we shifted 10 tonnes of gravel to finish and extend the wheelchair-friendly paths around the nature park which we started on our last visit. That works out at 0.714 tonnes per GoodGymer, or 0.357 tonnes per GoodGymer per hour. A more than decent workout - we've definitely earnt some pudding tonight!


This task supported
Oxford Urban Wildlife Group
OUWG maintains the diverse wildlife habitats at Boundary Brook Nature Park

Environment conservation, habitat restoration and management, wildlife gardening and wetland habitat management, community engagement, nature education.

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