After a grey and rainy week it was lovely to see the sun shining on Saturday morning as a group of 12 GG heroes from five different areas (+1 nephew volunteering as part of his Duke of Edinburgh Award) gathered on the banks of the Thames between Richmond and Teddington for a bit of balsam bashing.

Himalayan Balsam is a very large and invasive plant which takes over much of the land alongside the river, crowding out other plant species and generally making a nuisance of itself. "Bashing" means getting rid of it - by ripping it up - and together with a large group from the Friends of Ham Lands we really made a huge difference today!

This community mission to support the Friends was listed a number of weeks ago, and as one of the first larger group tasks to be made available it proved hugely popular. We met up at the Ham Street car park, then moved down to the area 1km along the river where the FOHL were already in full swing.

We could see huge areas of balsam to tackle, so we got stuck in, spacing ourselves out to observe social distancing. As the uninitiated soon discovered, this task is a whole lot of fun. It’s enormously satisfying to pull up weeds which can grow to several metres in height, laying waste to vast areas and piling them high into huge heaps. Mena was delighted, on her own little "killing spree"!

At times it felt like we were far, far away from suburban Richmond, perhaps in some (very mild!) tropical jungle, as we pushed deeper into the thickets and the plants towered over us. Everyone was super focused on the task and powering through the undergrowth, and when we looked back towards the towpath we were surprised to see how much progress we had made.

Huge thanks to everyone who made the trip from further afield to join us, and look forward to seeing everyone on another community mission soon!