Photo Gallery

Ready, steady, coppice

Brasenose Woods on a crisp autumn morning - beautiful

Section 1999 in need of some OCV TLC

Mary's bonfire

Lots of bull rushes removed in a morning's work

Knocking in an intermediate fence post

The dismembered willow

The bank, a keen volunteer made an early start

The north fen, ready for raking.

OCV and the Friends for the Lye Valley hard at work

Building a temporary bridge (Photo courtesy of Alan Allport, Friends of the Trap Grounds)

Removing a rusting chassis from Heron Swamp

Plenty of hawthorn to clear so the grass can be mown later

Raking the North fen (courtesy J Webb)

Tea break (courtesy J Webb)

Banded General Soldierfly (Stratiomys potamida) (courtesy J Webb)

The spire of St. Mary's church across the fields

Man With Balsam 1

Prize Specimen

A view across one of the six meadows

Finishing off the decking on the pedestrian bridge.

Logs laid down on the muddy areas of the path

Finishing off the decking on the bridge for the ponies.

Small Balsam - before

Small Balsam - after

Tea-time

Path before work - worn down by weather and motorbikes

Stone pitching 1 - A hole is dug (easier said than done in stony ground)

Stone pitching 2 - Hole is filled with stones with as few gaps as possible ("horizontal drystone walling")

Digging in the first foundation sleeper on one of the bridges

The bridging timbers countersunk for the coach screws that will fix them to the sleeper

The view across the fen

Rectory Farm Fields

Excavating fallen stones both sides of the wall

The wall is collapsing in places

It's a wrap! The dismantled chainlink fence

Unusually civilized arrangements for lunch

A very nicely hung gate

Mixing it up

Mixing team 2

"Like icing a cake"

Jubilee Fields & Long Meadow and a multiplicity of tasks

Replacing a sign #1

Replacing a sign #2

Building a barricade by the bird hide

The plan is to divert the footpath...

...so that birds have a space to nest close to the pond

Today we're clearing scrub from the fen.

Brambles and willow/hazel/birch regrowth is taking over in some areas...

...and shading out the fenland species.

Clearing scrub from the valley side to preserve the limestone grassland

Without intervention the whole valley side would progress to woodland...

... and the rare grassland flora would be lost

At Sunny Aston Rowant to plant Juniper

Juniper cuttings ready to plant out

Off to dig

The finished repair to the bird hide

Oxford Conversation Volunteers

Hanging out gloves to dry

Clearing the woodland ride at Sydlings Copse

Cleared path

And starting to clear the fen.

In Mary Sadler's Field: clearing the scrub that inhibits the heather

One of several piles of cut gorse with established heather in the middle distance to the right

heather to the left of the path, gorse to the right.

Today we're tackling a slope covered in a tangled mass of bramble, rose and thorn.

Photos from forty years ago show the slope covered in chalk grassland flora, but grazing sheep haven't been enough to stop the scrub invading.

So we're going to return the slope to the rare chalk grassland for which Aston Rowant is famous.