Moseley Bog

Over the years I have become involved with conservation groups associated with Moseley Bog and along the River Cole.  Volunteers coppice woodland, pick up litter, dead hedge, pick up litter, scrape duckweed off ponds and pick up litter.

I find litter picking very satisfying.  I do use the ‘professional’ litter pickers but constantly squeezing the grips makes my hands painful.  Also it is difficult to aim accurately into a bramble patch harbouring a nest of empty cans.  Best wear strong clothing and gloves and plunge right in, I say.  What’s a thorn in the side compared to a bum thumb.  Of course being made redundant in the litter-picking department would be better.

I have become quite the expert at dead hedging.  It is very agreeable  opening up a glade with coppicing to let wildflowers have some breathing space and using the accumulating branches to fence and protect that space.  Mini-mammal highways!

At my age donning wellies and standing in muddy water is a particularly satisfying occupation.  Not something I thought I would be doing that often after age 10.    Forget the fact that you quickly become aware that your balance on rocks and stones is not quite as stable as it used to be and being only 5’ 2” means the water gets into your size 4 wellies quicker than someone who is 6’ 2”, wearing size 10 wellies.  It is fun and no-one is going to tell me off.   Might have to investigate wader possibilities.  Extra small!

Why would you be standing in muddy water, I hear you ask?  Or possibly not but I shall tell you anyway.  In Moseley Bog there are some burnt mounds with a river running through.  Well, not a river exactly, but on occasion, like most of this year, an extremely impertinent, fast flowing stream.  The action of the water washes away the small stones and pebbles that constitute the burnt mound. Current thinking suggests that burnt mounds were bronze age sauna’s.  These stones are old and cold now, but three thousand years ago they might have given you a pretty good blister.

Anyway, pretty nifty hazel fencing is created to line the banks through the burnt mound area which means volunteers wading into the water and holding posts whilst they are hammered in.  The posts not the volunteers.  Hazel rods are threaded in and around the posts and pressed together.  It’s like weaving but wetter. 

A hot sauna seems quite appealing by the time you’ve finished.

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