York has a Himalayan Balsam problem, a big one. It's rife around our many river banks and its teeny tiny root system does nothing to stabilise the banks and prevent flooding. St Nicks have set themselves a huge and very long-term challenge to eradicate it, and for that they need as many volunteers as possible.

Lizzie and I went to the first of several weekly sessions led by St Nicks to tackle the area around Tang Hall Beck. This job is absolutely gargantuan. Fortunately, the weed comes out of the ground easily so once we'd got our heads around the size of the task, we settled into an almost therapeutic rhythm.

The hardest part of the task was avoiding the nettles which grow amongst the balsam. Nettles are useful for the river banks so ideally the nettles should remain in situ, but we did get lots of tingly skin from brushing up against them so definitely long sleeves next time!

This is going to be a weekly mission, every Thursday at 17:30 - we really want to support St Nicks and all the great work they do so we want as many people as possible to get involved with this.

If you want a bit more information about Himalayan Balsam and why it's a problem, there's a useful and concise article here