During one of the conservation sessions at the nature reserve last year volunteers discovered the Stirling Walk noticeboard unseremoniously dumped in the stream.
How someone had managed to get it in there we will never know, but it took the combined efforts of a team of 5 volunteers to haul it back out again.
Unfortunately one of the legs had been broken by its upending, and therefore since then Berrylands Scout group have been storing the sign, waiting for an opportunity to repair and reinstall it in such away that it wouldn’t be able to happen again.
Skip forward to couple of months ago when the scout group approached the Friends of Berrylands Nature Reserve to see if our team of volunteers might be able to help with the task, getting the noticeboard back up again, so we both have a space where we can promote our events and activities to the local community.
The Friends group rose to the task!
We came up with a plan for how to repair, and reinforce the sign, and used part of one of our volunteer sessions recently to clear the area on Stirling Walk opposite Berrylands Scout Hut, with the team of community volunteers cutting back and digging out brambles, and collectively deciding where the sign should go.
Once we had ordered all of the necessary materials a small team convened for a special session today to get the job done.
Volunteers started by repairing and lengthening the noticeboard legs, to allow it to be fixed more firmly in position, before setting to work digging out the post holes. It was hard going with a layer of debris to get through before reaching the clay underneath, and some of it looking like it may have been remnants from Surbiton Lagoon, which previously occupied the site.
After hours of repairing and digging the team were finally ready for installation.
With a big effort we manouvered the incredibly heavy sign into position and filled around the legs with postcrete.
The job was finally done (and the team were all wiped out!).
Please keep any eye on the noticeboard in the near future for all the events and activities both the nature reserve team and the scouts group have going on, and spare a little thought for the efforts of the local volunteers who helped to get it back where it rightly belongs.
