Jo's Blog
Welcome to Jo's Blog where Jo Sayers, Project Officer for the ALSF Project tells it like it is !
Jo Sayers is working as the Project Officer on the £400,000 ALSF project which is due for completion in March 2008. Jo spends a great deal of her time out on site, with digger drivers, ecologists, rangers, artists, etc and through her blog she will keep a regular record of life 'on the ground'.
The project is divided between two sites, Cleveland Lakes and Lakeside recreation area, with work starting in November.
For more details about the whole ALSF project, take a look at the Summary page.
24 March - the end is in sight…..
Its nearly the end of the ALSF project Boo hoo However everything looks great. The 30,000 reed plants are planted (although I think it will be a while before there is a sea of green!) and hopefully they wont attract too much interest from passing swans, geese and coots until they are established. The protective fencing should help.
Twenty students from Sparsholt College, near Winchester,spent a day planting reeds and I hope they enjoyed their day even if they did go home tired and muddy . Then later in the week Whitmarsh Lockhart staff from Swindon joined us for the day and put in some seriously hard work.
Local artist John Charles Kimberley, spent the Easter weekend planting and weaving the willow bio-dome at Lakeside with a total of 79 helpers from the local community, so a big thanks to the South Cerney massive and I hope that locals and visitors will enjoy the sculpture for years to come.
15 March - Biodomes and biodiversity
This week has seen more rain just as things were finally drying out. Cleveland landscaping is just about finished with some last minute fish habitat to provide fish with small channels into the reedbed to hide from predators. The 30,000 reed plants have arrived in crates that will be moved down to the reedbed over the weekend (yes we work weekends too!) ready for planting next week. At least the bit of rain we have had has softened the ground to make planting easier !
Local community artist John Charles Kimberley has started work on the Biodome steel and willow sculpture at Lakeside. Over the next couple of weeks John will work with the community to weave live willow plants around the structure to create a living willow dome, complete with a seating area inside for people to relax and enjoy the view out over the lake.
If you live locally why not join Johno at Lakeside over the Easter weekend, anytime between 10am and 4pm to come and weave some willow!
27 February - Bird hide taking shape, with a little help….
The rangers have been carrying out drainage work to the area of car parking at Lakeside. This ( plus some tarmac) will improve the current potholed surface beyond recognition, with some clever little infiltration trenches that will direct surface water away from the clear waters of the lake.
Cleveland now looks completely different from a few weeks ago. There are now vast reed planting areas that have been landscaped to provide deeper channels of water for fish to hide in.
Exciting news - the artist designed bird hide is starting to take shape! The concrete foundations are in and the rammed earth walls are rising. On Tuesday a group of 12 children from Ann Edwards School, South Cerney were asked to come and help with the building. They really got stuck in and helped to build the rammed earth walls, filling and tamping the layers of earth down, an ancient method of construction used all over the world. They left the site wearing mud on the hands, clothes, wellies and faces - like the advert says 'Dirt is Good'! We think they had a good time! Thank you to their teacher Sarah Law for bringing such an enthusiastic group.
28 January - Rangers recreating ridge and furrow - underwater!…..
I finally get a week in the office to catch up on emails and reports and guess what - it hasnt rained! Thanks to whoever has been sundancing for me.
Reports have been coming in that water levels are finally dropping and that ground conditions are good to firm (ish)
.
At Lakeside, the Rangers have been raking underwater and creating submerged gravel sculptures. They have created an underwater ridge and furrow gravel area to encourage the growth of the rare stoneworts for which lake 12 was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
These plants thrive in clean water and grow well on bare gravel, so we hope that the underwater ridge and furrow will have provided these plants with an area of prime habitat on lake 12.
Over at Cleveland, the exciting news for this week is that the artist has started work on an amazing template/prototype for the roof of the bird hide so watch this space for progress ..more details to follow shortly, once I have been let out of the office!
21 January - Bring me sunshine…..
The basis restoration to Cleveland reedbed is now finished and MJ Church have moved off site. All we have to do now is complete the final landscaping, reed planting, bird hide construction and finish the footpaths in the meantime, can someone start doing a sundance for me? I cant believe the amount of rain we have had in the last two months!!!!
Lakeside recreation area is already looking fantastic (if a bit wet and muddy!). The rangers were busy last week with their hairy sausages (coir rolls). They have been staking in coir rolls along the lake edge to protect it from erosion by wave action along the lake edges. Behind this they have been landscaping a gentle slope and a wetland margin that will be planted with a mixture of plants that will attract songbirds and insects. Hopefully summer visitors will get a fab display of aerial acrobats such as dragon and damsel flies and maybe even the odd hobby.
08 January 2008 - It's so cool at Cleveland……
With Christmas and the New Year celebrations now a distant memory, work is progressing again on the Cleveland reedbed despite the weather! Driving rain and hard frosts have made conditions challenging to say the least.
The good news is that planning permission has now been approved for the artist designed birdhide, which will be sited overlooking the reedbed.Watch this space for progress on the building of what will be a spectacular community space.
The Cotswold Water Park Estates and Ranger team have received a large consignment of wooden stakes and coir rolls so they either have plans for some serious vampire slaying or they are going to start on the bank stabilisation at Lakeside recreation area to make it safe for the public.
The coir rolls will be a temporary installation along the banks to allow the new plants to become firmly established - eventually the rolls will rot, leaving the root systsyem to provide a natural stable bank edge.
I just hope that they have their thermal socks on so they dont get too cold while working on the lake edge .
20 December - Badgers sett the scene
My latest task has been to stay close to the two badger setts down on the work site, and to ensure that the enthusiastic digger drivers do not go anywhere near these large setts. They are both occupied by a large number of badgers, and as they are a protected species it is vital to ensure their homes are not disturbed. We have consulted with Natural England about the appropriate actions to take and as a result have enforced some site rules.
Footpath works at Cleveland have also started, with some clearance taking place this week. With this fine but very cold weather, the water levels have been dropping, but not quite as fast as my body temperature ! One of the plus points of these bright clear days is the spectacular sunsets that can be seen across the lakes, such as the one pictured above.
10 December - Warning Lumberjack Rangers at Work!
This week work started at Lakeside recreation area near South Cerney.
The Cotswold Water Park Society Estates and Rangers team started preparing the site for improvement works to begin. All trees along the edge of the lake have now been coppiced down to ground level. As well as stopping the overhanging branches shading out the rare Charophytes (aquatic plants living in Lake 12 which makes it a Site of Special Scientific Interest ) it has also given fantastic views over the lake!
Over the next couple of months Lakeside will be transformed with new tarmac surfaces, better drainage, reshaped lake edges and planted with a mixture of wetland plants to attract more songbirds and insects. An exciting sculpture is being designed and built, and this will be a starting point for a waymarked trail to Cleveland lakes and beyond .
29 November - The word of the week is claggy!
As the mud is drying it's getting a lot more sticky. Ten tonne of mud on the bottom of your wellies does wonders for toning those thigh and bum muscles .
This week the lads from MJ Churches have really been shifting the muck creating the base for the wader scrapes - areas of rough ground and shallow water, ideal for wading birds to feed and breed. By Friday 30 Nov. they will have moved 40,000 cubic metres of soil ( 80,000 tonnes) which is equivalent to around half a million wheelbarrow loads!
The Cotswold Water Park Estates and Ranger Services have been carrying out their annual winter tree maintenance at Cleveland Lakes this week so that they can get stuck into the work at Lakeside next week.
What with footpath works starting at Cleveland next week and Lakeside improvement works starting too next week, I shall be mostly…. busy!
20 November - Mucking good fun
This week I have been mostly muddy!
Two weeks into the basic restoration works now at Cleveland Lakes and the major muck shift is going well despite the recent spell of wet weather! The first week it looked like a hole in the ground that just kept getting bigger but now you can get an idea of the scale of the wetland that will be created.
There have been some fun and games over the last week and at one or two points I didnt think the dumpers would get out of the mud (or me for that matter!). However the rain has at least given us an idea of what the site will look like when it is finished.
It may still look like a big muddy hole in the ground but actually it is the first dent in a project that will restore old gravel workings to a 15 hectare reedbed and wetland habitat that will attract all sorts of wildlife - honestly!
