Thanks to the 6 brilliant goodgymers who came down to Westbury Banks Nature Reserve to join 4 regular volunteers for a fun task installing new MagPosts (fence posts with a magnifying glass at the top). These will help children (and enthusiastic adults) to admire all sorts of natural materials found at the reserve.

This was GoodGym Haringey’s second visit to Westbury Banks this week, because we can’t get enough of the place! On Wednesday 11th March, the GoodGymers carried all the equipment over to allow us to install the MagPosts (you can read about that here: https://www.goodgym.org/reports/put-the-cart-before-the-hordes)

Danny and Kat visited from Brent and Barnet and got to work digging a hole for one of the posts and litter picking near the entrance. Meanwhile, Euclides (with the help of Sebastian who was surveying the site to help with his homework) helped dig a hole near the pond for the second post. Digging proved a bit tricky as we contended with rubble and litter buried beneath the soil of the former fly-tipping site. Litter highlights included lots of fragments of some brown 1970s patterned glass and a pink toy truck which contained some slug eggs!

When the holes were dug to a suitable width and depth, we positioned the MagPosts and filled the hole with rubble, postcrete and water. Before we knew it, this had hardened and we were able to find things to magnify! Leaves, worms, blossom, and those slug eggs in the toy truck.

We finished a little early, but after clearing up, we were joined by Rob and Carol who joined us for a walk to check out some planting going on around the site by some amazing local residents.

If you’d like to check out Westbury Banks Nature Reserve (and try out the magnificent magnifiers fo yourself), it will be the Reserve’s 3rd anniversary on Sunday 29th March, where the “task” might mainly involve enjoying a picnic! So do come along and bring a bit of food to share if you can.