A lazy long lunch starting at 2.15pm and going on until 5.30pm was perhaps not the very best preparation for an energetic community mission, but for those of us who decided that was a good idea it was a case of mind over matter (or mind over full stomachs) to get to the meeting point by the Star & Garter on Richmond Hill for a spot of tree surgery.

We had seen Ken four weeks ago for a mission that proved to be a lot of fun, identifying and elimintating Norway Maple and Sycamore saplings from the slopes of the hill, and this time we caught up with him near the top of the hill where some bigger trees needed to be taken care of.

Smaller groups headed off to do some much-needed litter-picking and tidying up with loppers after the previous mission while the main party, armed with large woodsaws, tackled the trees that needed removing, while . The trees in question had already been the object of some energetic efforts from a local Duke of Edinburgh group, and some follow up work was required to cut smaller trunks flush to the ground, removing those we could manage with the saws and leaving the larger ones for Ken to handle with the chainsaw at a later date.

The two main trees we needed to remove were much more of an effort, with fairly thick branches and thicker trunks requiring a lot more elbow grease. We took turns to hack away, learning the technique of putting a cut on the underside of a branch before sawing from the top down to snap it off. As the pieces came down, we sawed and lopped them up into smaller pieces and piled them up high - they branches were poisonous and needed to be disposed of by burning, which Ken will arrange later.

As we looked around the space we had cleared of trees and the enormous pile of branches we felt the sheer satisfaction of what a group of GGers can achieve in a short space of time, and in the end those of us still digesting a big bank holiday lunch were grateful for the fuel it had given us!