What started out as a grey-looking break of day turned out to be a great Saturday morning! The sun had come out and was shinning when I arrived at the Vanbrugh Pits, ready to help out the Friends of Westcombe Woodlands. Jenny arrived at the same time, straight from another community mission AND a parkrun!! Way to go Jenny!!

We joined a full team of other volunteers, who were busy cutting, lopping, pruning and sawing down a few invading trees. These trees shade out the wildflowers and acid grassland which are important for bees and butterflies, so cutting them down now will allow the wildlife to thrive when springtime comes.

Our first task was to clear out all the cuttings that were accumulating, by taking them to the collection point a few metres down the park. After a few trips back and forth and with the pile of cuttings growing ever so big, we were trusted with a pair of saws so that we could actually contribute to the cutting. Our mission was to saw a couple of medium size trees, leaving just a little stump on the ground.

Saws at the ready, Jenny and I tackled the first tree. In no time, all the branches and the main trunk were down! Feeling confident and dizzy with success, we moved on to the second tree. This one proved a little harder to deal with, with several branches and what seemed a few trunks all intertwined, making it difficult it actually have space to move the saws! Undeterred, we cut and sawed and carved and ripped (running out of synonyms here...) until there was nothing left apart from said stump!

Mission accomplished, all that was left was for us to take the saws back to their rightful place, take a group photo with the rest of the volunteers and walk back to Greenwich centre via a beautifully sunny Greenwich Park!! Ahhh, makes you fall right back in love with London! :-)