This evening we returned to Boundry Brook Nature Reserve to do some woodland clearing.

After admiring the new mural outside the reserve we headed in to be greeted by the lovely Helen. Our tasks this evening involved clearing up silver birch logs from some recent tree felling, creating brush piles with smaller branches and generally doing a bit if a spruce and tidy of a couple of clearings.

It was a gorgeous evening and we set to work, rescuing earwigs and snails as we worked and enjoying the glowing evening light.

After an hour and a bit if steady work we had assembled a good stack of silver birch logs, debated whether we'd be any good a caber tossing and created a MASSIVE brush pile, slightly trapping John and Fred as a result!

After checking on the path to the bird-hide which we helped to create last year, we headed off to do our various different forms of exercise; the goodgymers had a riverside run and Helen was due at a Morris Dancing session. GLORIOUS!

A morning well spent, raking the fallen leaves from hundreds of metres of paths around Boundary Brook Nature Park. If left the leaves would make the paths squelchy and slippery, undoing all our hard work in laying the stone in the first place. This task helps keep them accessible all year round.

Wednesday evening's task was a race against the sunset: We just about won!

Throughout autumn and winter Boundary Brook Nature Park do a lot of work to maintain their grassland areas. This mostly involves cutting back the brambles, which can easily take over and swamp more delicate plants, then digging out their roots. After all the recent rain this proved to be a very squelchy task, and the roots tenacious, but we managed to dig out several wheelbarrow loads of bramble roots before darkness stopped play. We were hoping to spot some bats in the reserve as darkness fell, but sadly none were visible - perhaps they were hiding from the rain?!

Last night we gradually extended the wheelchair accessible path to the bird hide at Boundary Brook Nature Park. A convoy of wheelbarrows, a pair of shovellers, a fine duo of rakers, and Bethan working those biceps on the heavy roller had the path inching ever closer to joining with the rest of the path network. There are just a few metres to go now to join it all up with the paths we built in previous years. Go team!

...is wheelchair accessible paths around the nature park. So who better to shovel and barrow 10 tonnes of gravel to make the dream a reality than GoodGym?!

We are actually quite the pros at this task, having created the current network of wheelchair accessible paths around Boundary Brook Nature Park 2 years ago. Those paths stood up to the wettest of winters pretty well, showing up the need to link up some other areas to the network. Tonight we started to build the path to the bird hide (a project we also had a hand in). We certainly got our step count up and a decent upper body work out pushing gravel all across the site to the furthest point!

There might be some sore arms in the morning, but also pride in what we managed to get done.

Watch the Countryfile episode featuring Boundary Brook Nature Park and Wytham Woods here.

With Boundary Brook Nature Park Open Afternoon this coming Saturday GoodGym were called in this week to make sure all the paths were clear and wide enough for wheelchairs and buggies. We took a 'divide and conquer' approach, with teams heading to different zones of the nature park to ensure that the paths were fully accessible. The site is now ready for visitors this weekend. In two weeks time we will return to replenish the gravel along the paths to help them stay dry and usable year round.