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2025 warden conference Made my way to the Royal Agriculture University this morning for the annual wardens shin-dig which Glorious Grasslands volunteers get invited to since we are also part of the Cotswold National Landscape. There was an excellent roster of speakers this year. The archaeologist from the A417 road project gave an overview of the finds they are analysing as part of the statutory excavations of the work site. There were quite a few interesting things from every age since the Mesolithic period some 12,000 years ago.
Summer walk after winter work The annual summer walk with Glorious Grasslands where we return to a site worked on over the winter habitat management season. The location today was a stunning SSSI site where we did a huge amount of gorse and scrub removal back in February. It was nice to meet up with the team again – we are not used to seeing each other without winter clothing. Today was scorching weather, and no work involved, just a pleasant walk down to the bank to take a look at what’s growing.
Last orchard guard Went over to Fromebridge for the monthly orchard work party with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. While walking over, we stopped to look at the pond, where we were putting vegetation in April. It was looking excellent, despite the recent drought and the low water levels of the pond. We also stopped to make a temporary repair to some fencing near the canal which the cattle had breached and accessed the towpath vegetation. There were quite a few tasks to look after the tree bases and remove some encroaching thistle from the grassland.
Baseline survey of the common A pretty busy day started with a meeting with Leah about the launch of the new Discover Dursley website. We are pretty much there with the initial content, so the next step for me over the weekend is to put the site live and put out a call to the wider community for content submissions. After lunch, we headed over to Sarah’s Field in Berkeley to check on the progress of the wild flowers after the winter management. They were looking in good shape, despite the recent drought and the surging dominant grasses.
Balsam under the M5 Met the Stroud Valleys Project crew on the A38 reserve to tackle Himalayan Balsam on this section of the Frome. This was done last year, and like the area last week, we’re seeing a marked decrease in the amount of balsam present. This section includes going under the bridge where the river and canal will go together under the M5 after the restoration of the missing mile. There’s not a lot of headroom under there – there will have to be quite a bit of digging to get enough depth to allow boats to pass under.