It was a brand new location for our mission on Saturday morning. The sky was overcast and we were a bit chilly as we gathered on the corner of a residential street close to Barnes town centre to meet task owner Crispin.

That wasn’t to last though as the sun soon came out, and the task was definitely one to get us sweating. Crispin led the group to a patch of land amongst the houses which had been surfaced long ago with the kind of bouncy rubber/tarmac used for playgrounds. Our mission was the tear it up to prepare the area for the development of a new garden for residents.

Crispin is involved in several charities and has the kind of energy and enthusiasm that can really inspire a group like us, and after he had briefed us we got stuck in with gusto. Through trial and error with the various tools on offer we discovered how to make enough of a rip in the surface to start pulling up great big sections of it in one go.

It was really, really hard work and the beating sun meant the water Crispin had brought for us was very welcome. But it was also very satisfying to be able to make progress with our efforts and the ever widening hole of bare earth gave us the motivation to keep going.

Crispin told us he would be taking the pieces we had torn up to the Townmead dump, so we had to break them up into manageable chunks to put in the car. This initially proved very difficult, with only a pair of garden loppers and a few fairly ineffectual old saws to make a cut and then a gargantuan effort needed to rip the pieces in two.

Fortunately Beth discovered that by folding the pieces in half and jumping on the fold they would split much more easily: cue much jumping up and down while holding onto each other for balance as we broke the sections we had piled up to the side into smaller pieces and started loading the car.

We didn’t manage to get all of the surface up and we were all a bit worried about the weight on the axles of Crispin’s wife’s car, but we knew there would be another chance to come back and finish the job on Monday evening’s Group Run.

After a group photo we headed off to Barnes for coffee and snacks, tired but feeling thoroughly satisfied with the job we had done!

To join for Part 2 on Monday evening, check out the Richmond session list and sign up!