There were seven of us at St Lawrence park yesterday and there were seven of us here today with four of us managing the double! The four survivors were joined by a first timer, James, who displayed some serious strength smashing the wires on the fences to get them out! We were also joined by Katie who earned here Community Cape today! Miranda completed her 25th good deed today too, halfway to getting that black shirt! We showed some good of-fence but not the best de-fence as a rogue bit of fencing scraped Paul leaving him with a Harry Potter-esque cut.

The job today was removing some old fencing that had been installed decades ago to protect the young trees as they grew in. The trees have now reached adulthood and the fences are no longer needed, the plan was to remove these fences so we can start tackling the undergrowth to allow better views into the park and make it feel like a safe place to be!

Removing the fences was serious work. The chains first had to be smashed from the fence post, the fencing then had to be ripped out from where nature had taken over and then you would reach the next fence post and the process started over again. Once a large enough portion of the fence was removed, it was rolled up and placed in the van to be disposed of. It was a great work out and at times felt like a tug of war with nature as 3 of us would be trying to rescue the fence from the wild overgrowth which had appropriated it.

There was also the old classic of litter picking. James and Emily got so engrossed in litter collection they disappeared into the thick undergrowth that we nearly forgot about them as we stopped for a tea break. The litter picking also revealed two toy monster trucks which Evan and Paul took on an ill advised race where there were no winners just two muddy boys.

We were also joined by Lorraine from Bell Group in cooperation with the Byker Community Trust who got to learn first hand what GoodGym was all about. There aren't any of Aimee's patented before and after pictures because it was impossible to show the 100s of meters of fences we removed in one photo but you can really see how many we managed to load into the van!