It was a sunny but blustery Sunday morning back at Harbottle park today. This was our second mission here if you missed the first one you can read about it here. The first time we were here we managed to remove half of the weeds from the entryway to the park but upon arriving today I was pleased to see that the task owner, Mike, had finished the job over the past few weeks. He also informed us that he had received praise from multiple parkgoers for the work we did at the last mission, it’s great to hear the work we’re doing is making an impact.

Amy and I arrived first to survey the scene, Amy also agreed to be the photographer for the day. As you can see, she did an amazing job! Even managing to pull off a shot with all of us in frame using the tea and coffee wheelbarrow as a makeshift tripod. Miranda arrived soon after and she and I had a ‘goldilocks’ moment. The gloves she had brought were too big for her and the gloves I had brought were too small for me but after swapping gloves they were both just right. (Gloves were supplied at the task, we just wanted to look cool in our personal gloves.)

Aimee was next to arrive, and we all got to work. The task today was cleaning up the edging of the path where nature had begun to encroach. This meant shoveling, hedge cutting and brushing. Aimee had ambitious plans for how much of the path we could clear in the time. I was dubious that we could clear the whole path in just two hours, but I couldn’t have been more wrong as we managed to clear even more than Aimee’s initial plan.

Rachel showed up slightly later after a morning of volunteering at junior parkrun! This means it was a day of double volunteering for the unstoppable Rachel! She started with a GoodGym favourite, litter picking! She was deep in the overgrowth for a lot of the morning, amassing a mighty collection of empty alcohol bottles and crisp packets.

Just like last time we were here, there was a much-needed coffee break. There was a world record attempt for the number of different drinks that could be made from a wheelbarrow, even including decaf options! The break a good time to recover, the hedges had put up a good fight and many of us are sporting some cuts and scrapes from the thorns. In the end, I think won the battle with the hedges – the photos above show just how much we managed to clear.

There’s still lots of work to do here and before we left, we were told that they would love to have us back!

(Thanks to Miranda for today’s pun, it’s perfect but sadly unoriginal! Rachel also had a great attempt with “rough around the hedges”. Both of these are 100 times better than anything I could have come up with!)