This morning saw our first of what will be set up as a rolling monthly community mission to help to create a butterfly habitat at Ham Lands. The Ham United Group (HUG) meet on the second Saturday of the month to cut back certain species and work on creating an environment for butterflies to thrive - and so we thought we’d tag along and lend a few pairs of GoodGym hands (and of course the infectious energy that comes with GoodGym).

There was GoodGym representation from various areas, with Africa from Richmond, Remy from Hounslow and Samia & Kate from Kingston, and we came armed with gloves and a couple of pairs of secateurs. This included the borrowed and now infamous squeaky secateurs (hope your ears are recovering Remy!).

Sufiyo, one of the HUG volunteers, helpfully briefed us on the task. After seeing our concern of potentially uprooting the wrong species, she also showed us exactly what ash saplings look like and demo’d the ash-pulling technique; thankfully it was very similar to that of thistle pulling so we felt a lot more confident and bonded about how Sufiyo and other HUG volunteers had also done the Thistle Pulling morning back in sunny July. We duly took note and diligently went on an ash and hawthorn sapling hunt.

We had a good b-ash at it"

and when it became a struggle to find any more saplings, we moved on to the cutting back and clearing of the overgrowth. Obviously we couldn’t resist the opportunity to put our Jungle Hacking skills into practice!

Hacking whilst yacking whilst on a @GGRichmon community mission to create a butterfly habitat with @HamUnitedGroup pic.twitter.com/smhNn7Pyk8

— GoodGym Richmond (@GGRichmon) September 8, 2018

We battled with the prickly brambles and hawthorn, chopped through branches and cleared them into one giant heap of prickly branchy brambly goodness.

We ended the mission hearing about the regular trip for coffee and cake to the local German bakery post-task. This totally solidified our plan to make this a monthly community mission.

Brimming with enthusiasm, Africa told us how she had been running alongside Olympic greats with Mo Farah joining her on Richmond Parkrun this morning. And awesome work on your first Parkrun Kate, we shall have to plan a pre-butterflies Parkrun takeover for next month!

Good luck with your final long run tomorrow Remy, you have totally nailed your marathon training 🏃‍♀️💪👏

So the next date for your diary for more butterfly goodness is: Saturday 13th October. Keep your eyes peeled for it being listed as a Richmond group run.