28 volunteers braved driving rain to pull up a vast area of balsam on Henllys Local Nature Reserve. The event was part of a 3-way balsam puling competition between us, Keep Wales Tidy in Cardiff and conservation volunteers with Tim Sykes from the Environment Agency on the River Cadnam in the New Forest.
The bar was set high earlier in the day with 6 piles totalling 2m in the New Forest, but a 2.5 m (h) x 4 m (w) pile in Cardiff.
The bar was set high earlier in the day with 6 piles totalling 2m in the New Forest, but a 2.5 m (h) x 4 m (w) pile in Cardiff.
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| At the start |
Our volunteers were built from Friends of Henllys LNR volunteers heavily bolstered by scouts, beavers, cubs, leaders and parents who worked like troopers over 1.5 hours. The area was dominated by balsam on an area of the reserve we have been unable to tackle in the past as there was just too much of it. However, with the huge numbers we had, we cleared an amazing area using the wheelbarrow to transport the pulled up balsam to the ever increasing central balsam pile. With only 10 minutes to go we started to build up the height to try and get as close to 2.5m as possible and stopped at a precarious 6ft 8 or 2.003m high. We also noticed it looked like a dalek, so gave it twig arms and an antenna for the final photo (balsam art).
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| part the way through |
Just like last time, everyone was wet muddy, but certainly Friends of Henllys LNR were extremely grateful for the help from 1st Henllys Scouts who helped us to do an area which our small group would have tackled over in two weeks but we did it in 1 night.
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| 10 minutes before the end |
The competition made it very exciting too and we reckon we can build on this next year into something even better with more groups taking part across the country. Well done to both Cardiff and the New Forest Groups.
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| 2.03m high balsam pile |
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| Our Himalayan balsam dalek |
links to all pics on Flickr: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjGywo8X
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