Last night GoodGym Huddersfield we expecting to engage in the latest round of our ongoing battle with the Jolly Big Bush at Christ Church Moldgreen. Removing this rampant shrub from the churchyard had been the focus of our efforts for a number of visits over the winter, but at the weekend I had word that we had been beaten to it! The Reverend Cheshire’s husband had tackled the Jolly Big Bush himself and spent his entire Saturday finishing the task GoodGym had started.

Not to worry though as there was other work to be done, in particular focussing a large laurel bush, which was had gone a little wild, and like the Jolly Big Bush also required removal. But as ever there was the run to do first, and the usual GoodGym crew met at the Stadium ready for action and praying Storm Gareth would hold off long enough to get the job done in reasonably clement conditions.

As it turned out we were hardly troubled by the weather, admittedly it was cold, and a little breezy but rain seemed to be mostly absent as we warmed up in the car park at the Stadium. It is a short-ish run up to Moldgreen (about 2.5K), and the team of Louise Galvin, Ben Godfrey, Heather Wilshaw Jones, Chris Green and Fiona Armitage were raring to get stuck into some extreme pruning by the time we arrived at the church.

We met Dr. Michael, a spritely octogenarian retired GP and member of the church congregation who had kindly turned out to enable us to get access to the tools stored in the church. We were soon tooled up and set to work, one group on the large Laurel whilst the other had a go at removing some of the roots remaining from the Jolly Big Bush, which hadn’t entirely given up the fight yet.

The laurel team were quickly making good progress, cutting off the bigger branches and adding them to the now massive pile of offcuts from our previous pruning efforts. The roots crew meanwhile had an altogether tougher task though, as the Jolly Big Bush was fighting on until the very last. Ben Godfrey and Dr. Michael went at the roots with pick axes, crowbars and spades in a tactical attack, eventually after some considerable effort managing to remove a hefty stump and lump of rooty material from the ground.

GoodGym are experts at getting a lot done in a short period and 45 minutes later the Large Laurel was almost entirely removed, save for a few small stumps. The transformation was quite actually startling and with the Large Laurel and Jolly Big Bush Both gone there was a much better view of the rectory behind. With the tidying up done, and tools returned we posed with a grateful Dr. Michael for the traditional victory photograph before running off back to the Stadium.

Thanks to all last night’s GoodGymmers and of course to Dr. Michael for being prepared to brave what could have been potentially poor conditions in order to get another good deed done for the local community. GoodGym never rests on its laurels when there is work to be done!

Thanks also to Louise Galvin for this week’s run report title.