By bike to the Avalon Marshes: wetlands for wildlife

An overhead map showing the the planned cycle route between the old Glastonbury Canal and the rhyne. The path splits in two: one runs mostly straight while the other breaks away and spirals towards a centre point, then spirals back out to join the straight path. — How the circles link with a new Spiral planting and then to the earthwork, which will take a year and a half.

It is the planting season again and there are plans for phase II of the Willow Walk, along the cycle route west of Glastonbury. The travellers have now gone, the end site has been cleared, and we are working with the county council to develop the landscaping of this last section.

The intention is to build an earthwork, a series of ramps to take one a few yards above ground level so that surrounding land patterns can be viewed as well as the planting scheme along this corridor, and to give a place to pause, to anticipate where one is going and where one has been. The earthwork will take 18 months to put in place, so the planting and seeding of this will be in 2000.

Volunteers turned out on March 7 to trim, prune, cut and reweave the willow planted last year, and again on the following Sunday to replant about 40 poles which had not taken, to continue planting the long avenue to the maze area, to plant truncheons around all the circles in order to give them greater substance while the cuttings become more established, and to plant the Spiral.