Thursday 25/6/26 Its been seven weeks since we cut all the grass at the mill, so I took our mower and saw swans in the river on the way, they are still a family of six with one white cygnet. The riverside track had been cut by James with the tractor & flail, he also cut a large amount of grass at the mill, which saved us a lot of work today.
Fred has removed a dead tree from the far corner near the small oak tree, this now gives vehicle access all along the river bank for environment agency trucks and makes it easier to cut grass on the track and footpath with the tractor & flail. We removed and burnt the rotten bird table from this area recently to prepare for this work.
It was very hot today so I started working in the shade cutting the end of the lawn by the trees where the flail couldn’t reach. I then cut the far side of the covered brick floor around the cycle rack, steps and Perspex panel. I also cut paths through the meadow.
Eddie switched on the nest cameras and saw two stock dove chicks in the barn owl box. Eddie strimmed around the trees, mowed the small patch of grass where the tables and bench seat are and strimmed weeds from brick floors and other areas.
Anne Marie walked down and put a tall cane in for the sunflower plant which has grown. Cornflowers were falling over again, they were tied up so the flowers can be seen. Anne Marie noticed hollyhocks in flower around the tree, then watered all the gardens.
An insect hotel had been knocked over by the flail which broke one of the legs, so I made another leg from a piece of wood which we fitted to the stand. The top of the meadow next to the grindstone had been cut down with the flail, so flowers can no longer be seen from the footpath, but there are still flowers on the sloping bank.
Last week I setup the trail camera in front of the water wheel pointing at the fallen wall as birds are nesting in holes there, we had seen a wren fly out and we suspected martins were nesting there too, but the camera didn’t capture any birds and we didn’t see any today when working on the opposite bank.
We had lunch outside under the cherry tree again, the cherries are darker and riper now so we had more of them again today. In the afternoon the broken bench on the Nar Valley Way was in the shade, so we loaded up tools and wood to repair it and went across our bridge. Eddie strimmed long grass around the bench and I cut a piece of wood to fit to the back of it to hold all the parts together and added extra screws. We had a last cup of tea in the railway wagon and then came back.
Anne Marie started walking the whole Nar Valley Way on Friday morning and sent pictures of two different swan families, both with four cygnets. The white cygnet was at the bone mill and the other family with larger cygnets were downstream towards King's Lynn, we think these are from the nest we walked to in April.
The 10 Years Ago link at the bottom of blog articles has been changed to 5 Years Ago, as there were hardly any blogs from July 2016 to May 2017, but we started planning our grant funded projects around 5 years ago. The Activity link can still be used to see what was happening in 2016 or any other year.
Graham Bartlett
Interactive Plan Activity Previous Open Days Workers 5 Years Ago
