November saw us in the depths of Ewhurst, at Lower Breache Road, tackling a very overgrown footpath and half buried /flooded farmers’ bridge. Needless to say, the culprit for the blockage was entwined brambles and the bridge replacement was about 150 metres away on the far side of the main blockage. So whilst the veg team donned their leather gloves and tried to tuck in anything that would snag on the brambles (with mixed success), the bridge team were given the task of carrying all the materials and tools through the brambles to the job site. Have you ever tried squeezing through a bramble hedge carrying an armful of heavy stuff, so you can’t see your feet? I thought not. I always said if you want new experiences, join the work party. Anyway, we struggled on and by the time we had finished the bridge, you could dance your way back to the cars through a broad swathe of clear footpath.

December is traditionally our shorter work party, followed by Christmas lunch in a nearby hostelry. Some of our members had informed me of a badly-overgrown path not far from Dunsfold Church, which sounded ideal for us to do some gentle snipping and then retire to the Sun Inn in Dunsfold. Of course, things didn’t quite work out that simple or relaxed. We parked at Dunsfold Church, gathered up our selection of gardening tools and clippers and walked off to the path.

Firstly, to get to the start of the path was a half mile walk and the section which needed clearing was about a mile long. Oh, and did I mention it was throwing it down, all the time, and the path was on slippy clay, which was getting boggier and boggier?

Congratulations to everyone involved: they worked hard all morning and whilst we didn’t clear a mile, we certainly gave it a good bashing (stoicism medals will be awarded later). It also showed the truth about how fast rumours can spread, because I was at the far end of the path towards the end of the morning and said to the person next to me, ‘I think we should probably stop now’, and by the time I turned round to pass on the message, they were all packed-up and disappearing into the distance. Fortunately, we had a lovely meal in the pub and were able to bask in the glory of telling anyone who would listen about all the work we had done, in spite of the weather.

January—thank goodness we all rested.

Remember—some people get experiences for presents these days, but you can get some by just joining the work party. See details in ‘Footpaths’ on this website.

Well what with lockdowns and social distancing it’s not exactly been a hard-working year but the good news is that work parties restarted in August and I’m pleased to say that everyone had not withered away from inaction but they were all surprisingly chipper and full of vim.

In August we went to near Cranleigh Rugby Club and installed a new bridge and cut back lots of vegetation from various paths with 13 people turning up for the work.

September saw us at the footpath at the end of Peperharow Road in Godalming ready to clear lots of dense vegetation. First look showed us that all the vegetation had taken maximum advantage of the lockdown and grown lots and apart from the normal nettles, brambles etc there appears to have been a battle for survival between the Mare’s Tail and the Himalayan Balsam each of which was trying to outgrow the other. However, with 18 people turning up, the path soon re-emerged from the greenery.

Unfortunately the now cleared path was in a sorry state with potholes, mud holes and various degradation so we decided to return to Peperharow Road again in October. This time we installed two short boardwalks, cut back parts of the bank and cleared more vegetation from the very end of the path. We also had a second veg team who tackled the completely blocked / disappeared path which was supposed to run along parallel to Hell’s ditch. After hacking their way through a substantial distance they did reach a sort of clearing but there was no sign of where the original path went so, after the serious work-out required to reach that point, we decided to save the rest for another day. This time we had 20 people turn up.

Our efforts at Peperharow Road were noticed by the local residents and we received a nice thank you email from one.

Thanks to everyone for all their hard work and we look forward to seeing even more volunteers on our next work parties.