The Hughenden stream wasn’t flowing on New Year’s Day when we visited but then we heard that the stream was starting to flow again on 2 January.
Now it’s in full flow and looking glorious on a cold and sunny mid-January day.
A volunteer work party kicked off our 2023 conservation programme. Numbers had to be restricted because the car park is always busy during the week and we only managed to find two spaces.
The channel by the bridge on the southern stream was very restricted by invasive vegetation and this had to be dug out with garden forks which was a very difficult and tiring task.
The results were very obvious and on past experience we expect the silt will be gone in 24 hours and the chalk stream bed revealed again.
Our thanks to Bill, Keith and Phillip who worked in the river and Judy and Julie who took away the vegetation and made piles for removal by the Council.
We were delighted that seventeen people turned up for the work party at Desborough Park to tackle ongoing conservation tasks.
Judy, Keith, Eddie, Karina and Phillip helped people working in the stream and led other small groups, litter picking and working on the bankside cutting down excess vegetation.
The vegetation blocking the stream had to be dug out with heavy forks borrowed from Chiltern Rangers, and this work was the most difficult we’ve ever encountered.
Everyone was ready for a well-deserved break half way through to recover with hot drinks and biscuits.
With huge thanks to the volunteers on the day and to Chiltern Rangers for lending the forks.
Friends of the Wye supporters helped with the Thames 21 PlasticBlitz event in Wooburn Park in conjunction with LitterBlitz and Bourne End & Cookham Rotary Club.
The group recovered in total, 16 bags of rubbish from a 250 metre stretch of the river and an additional 11 bags of rubbish in the surrounding areas. Sadly, they show all too clearly the problem of illegal fly tipping and littering in and around urban areas of the river.
Wooburn and Bourne End Parish Council collected all the bags and disposed of them, as their part of the clean-up.
Thanks to everyone involved including Friends of the Wye supporters Barry & Caroline.
Friends of the Wye Conservation Volunteers supported the Thames21 PlasticBlitz, and Chiltern Rangers, by cleaning the back stream from Kingsmead to the Ford at Beech Road. This was prior to, and in preparation for, a planned Chalk Chairs and Cherries River Wye restoration project.
Space in the river was very restricted with room for only three people working side by side and no access from the bank along the 100 metres of river. All the heavy bags of cleared plastic and metal had to be taken back down stream to the start point.
There is a weir near the Ford which we knew about from our pre-task risk assessment, and care was needed to clear it of vegetation to release the flow and reduce the water depth before Julie could be helped up into the shallower water.
All in all a challenging but effective work party and thanks to Eddie, Bill, and Julie who did all the hard work, with Judy and Keith removing the rubbish to the Chiltern Rangers’ skip.