Well it’s finally here, the end of summer (what summer I hear you say!!!), and autumn has begun and along with it all the fun and the hard work that the Gravel Pits Action Group do at this dramatic and beautiful time of the year.

It’s been a crazy summer hasn’t it, what with a combination of atrocious weather and Council budget cuts, but we’ve come through it, probably stronger than ever? GPAG have taken on the mantle of the vast majority of the planning of tasks and expediting all the work that needs to be done to manage this fantastic site, and believe me there’s lots of it to do!

Hard work aside we do have the good times as well, we’ve won two grants and have events coming up like our forthcoming “Besom Making Event” for Halloween.

For those uneducated ones amongst you who don’t know what a besom is? Well here’s the Wikipedia explanation;”Besom brooms are traditionally constructed brooms made of a bundle of twigs, tied to a stouter pole and are the brooms traditionally associated with witches. As a result of its construction around a central pole, the brush of the besom is rounded instead of flat. The bristles can be made of many materials but traditionally the handle is made of hazel wood and the head is of birch twigs”. Well now you know!

The group has spent several weekends collecting the handles and brash to make these besoms and we’re ready now for the witching hour – so watch this space.

Several hours of hard work was over and the intrepid workers were heading home, when…..

It was the 16^th April 2011, a Saturday morning and the task had been to staple chicken mesh to the 50m or so of boardwalk alongside Pond 3. It had been a warm day and very hard work but it had been a successful day.

Out of the bushes, maybe a hundred metres away, emerged a beautiful sight – a mature doe roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). Rik, Keith, Mike and the dogs, stopped mid stride to take in the amazing view.

The doe knew we were there but we must have been down wind otherwise I’m sure it would have bolted. Instead it seemed as curious about us as we were about her.

She stopped at the edge of the tow path and for what seemed like an age stared us straight in the eye. Then after about 30 seconds, quite calmly and serenely, she trotted across the tow path and vanished into the bushes.

Funnily enough, Mike had seen another roe earlier in the day, which was a first for him in the Pits.  He’d seen many others in other parts of Bolton, but much to the amusement of other group members, he had never seen one in the Pits before today. Now though his duck was broken and he could hold his head high.

Wow was all she wrote!