With one day to go before the BSBI Annual Summer Meeting, Field Meetings Secretary
Jonathan Shanklin is feeling the strain!
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| Valerianella carinata Image courtesy of J. Crellin http://www.floralimages.co.uk/page.php? taxon=valerianella_carinata,1 |
He says: "The venue is expecting us (checked), the
coaches are booked (checked), and everyone is due to arrive in time for dinner
at 18:30 (e-mailed all). The weather will do what it will (probably
rain). The hard part has proven to be matching up the requests on the
booking tick sheet with the recording parties over the weekend. The
initial matching up tried to include a recorder, a driver and a passenger in
each group, matched according to the ticks, and made sure that everyone was in
a different group each day. Whilst the theory worked fine, time had
passed since the forms were sent in and for several people their plans had
changed, so there have been quite a few revisions. I somehow suspect that
there will be more when we all assemble.
"In the meantime Jon has been quite busy recording: he
spent a week in north Oxfordshire at the beginning of May (nicest find probably
Lithospermum arvense on a disturbed road verge), but still has a lot (maybe
2000) of records to type in, lead a party for an evening walk round part of
Wandlebury Country Park near Cambridge, which required cycling up one of the
biggest hills in Cambridgeshire (so not very big), spent a day with the local
Environmental Records Centre surveying Cheveley (nicest find Trifolium subterraneum
on a rather upmarket housing estate verge), had a joint excursion with the
Essex local group (nicest plant Cerastium arvense in flower), and stopped off
for an afternoon recording near Chester (Valerianella carinata probably the
scarcest find) on the way to Blencathra. Much of today has been spent
scything nettles from Dodleston motte & bailey!
"So that's it - fingers crossed that everything works and we
all have a great time. More blogs to come".
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