Sadly, I had to cancel my trip to Ramsey Island over August bank holiday week. Unforeseen circumstances at home meant that plans had to be changed and my trip was put off until next summer.

However, this did give me an opportunity to try out some local conservation volunteering instead. My company gives me two paid days per year to volunteer for social or environmental causes, so with Ramsey no longer happening I searched quickly for local opportunities. I soon found a two-day task with Northamptonshire Conservation Volunteers.

Last Wednesday I headed out to Abington Meadows Nature Reserve near Weston Favell. On a warm but grey morning I met rangers from Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust and a small group of other volunteers at the edge of the meadows. We walked out to the centre of the site, each of us carrying a bow saw and pair of loppers. We stopped at a central area where the rangers had already used a chainsaw cut down a number of willow trees. Our task was to cut up the fallen trees and to put them on a fire.

Whilst cutting down trees and setting fire to them might not seem the most conservation-minded thing to do, I have learnt over many years of volunteering that it’s an often vital activity in maintaining many protected sites. With so many of our water meadows and reedbeds having been lost since the Second World War, those that remain need to be managed. This is to prevent natural succession leading to them being overtaken by willow and eventually drying up. In this case, this was exactly what was happening. The trees needed to be burned as the amount of willow taken down couldn’t all be taken off the site and if left on the ground it would re-grow not just from the stumps but also the cut down timber and brash.

So, for two days, I cut up the fallen trees and put them on the fire and, when the originally cut down trees had all gone, we cut down some more by hand to reduce the willow further.

This was an activity that took me back to some of my original conservation volunteering in Cheshire nearly 13 years ago. I have spent many a Sunday out of a Cheshire Wildlife Trust wetland site doing exactly the same task and over that time have seen what a significant positive impact a group of volunteers can have.

The only sad thing about this experience is that so many of the similar opportunities are only during weekdays when I’m out at work. However, I did learn of a couple of weekend volunteer groups which I might have to give a try.