Heaps of new blog posts today!

I finally submitted my epic 7,000-word college assignment on the Freshford Local Area Plan (phew!) so am now catching up on some long-overdue blogging. Thanks for reading, folks - please leave a comment!! :)

Riverside Furniture - take two!

Having mourned the loss of our beautiful log seats to an anti-social element, we finally got around to making some new ones!

Mum, Rita, Anne, Martina + assorted kids testing out the new benches and 

Anne's amazing profiteroles after an easter egg hunt

I say we, but I actually mean my friends and fellow students Patrick Guerin (see photos below) and John Fitzgerald, who arrived early one misty morning armed with chainsaws and muscle. I made the tea :) They trimmed up a few willow trees for coppicing (which I'll be blogging about later in the season), then hoisted trunks and branches of deadwood up to the fire pit and made the seats: good, strong, sturdy ones dug about 6" into the ground. Very comfy they are, too, as we found out at 2012's first riverside community party.

Vandalism in the River Field

Our beautiful log seats have been burnt and our armchairs trashed.

What I spotted this week...

...nature nerd alert! It's been an especially good week for encounters with creatures so here's a list:

little egrets flying, spent salmon leaping, dog otter swimming, black cormorant diving, a hen harrier perching, fiiiive gold rings! oh, wait - excuse that last bit... :P

(ps: major props to my new super-bargain North Face jacket and shearling mittens, which have made the whole spotting business infinitely more snug.)

Making coracles

Traditional, ancient river boats and the biggest water-worthy vessel you can make with one ox hide, coracles have been found in river and lakeside communities the world over, from Vietnam to India to Tibet to America to the British Isles. I'd been wanting to make one for ages, especially since I realised I'd be able to go round the maze in one during the winter floods.

Early summer in the River Field

A few photos taken this week...

Riverside furniture - a sitter's guide

We like to renew, reuse and recycle where possible here at the River Field.

These little log seats were cut with a chainsaw from an old sally tree we pulled out of the river.

The armchairs, meanwhile, were saved from a slow, dusty death of woodworm and barn mould. They are now enjoying their twilight years on the riverbank, while fishermen and people out for a stroll enjoy them.

I planted willow saplings to wind through the frames, and tomorrow I'm going to shove in some buddlia too to attract the butterflies.

Messing about in the river...

Here are some pictures of one of our volunteers, Jake, enjoying the first swim of summer. It was boiling hot on Friday - 24 degrees! - so after we'd finished mudding the roundhouse, we jumped into the river to clean up and cool off. I found a tree with an overhanging branch at just the right height to catch on to and float in the current... heaven.

Caught By The River

While I think of it, here's another little something I did a few weeks ago for the wonderful folks at caughtbytheriver.net: http://caughtbytheriver.net/2011/04/caught-by-the-river-field/