Between Christmas and New Year, Goodgymmers from hither and yon gathered at... hither. Hither Green to be precise. Our task: to plant 200 saplings on a Network Rail bank.

But not without first taking a star turn in front of ITV news cameras. It was great practice at taking direction ("run in the road") ahead of the task proper. After a couple of takes it was time to get down to the real work.

At the task, we were basically instructed not to die ("wear high vis and don't climb the fence onto the live rail"). Tree planting involved stabbing a trowel into the bank, plopping a hedgerow sapling in, staking with a bamboo stake then wrapping the whole assemblage in plastic to protect the young trees. There were several different types of sapling so the end result should be a slightly random mixed hedgerow.

Another team got an impressive amount of weeding done.

Task completed, it was back to yon North London for most of the team, except for Rita who instead ran thither.