A lovely bright morning on the Ham Lands saw 6 cheery GGers from Richmond and Hounslow gather on Riverside Drive for a monthly dose of doing good with the Friends of Ham Lands.

Sharon gave us our briefing which - after last week’s attack on the ivy under one tree - was to do some raking under another tree nearby, as well as to uproot the small brambles which had started to sprout from underground roots. We selected our rakes and a couple of pick axes and headed over to the tree.

There was a chill in the air but the sun shone down and soon we were warm from the effort. It turned out the vegetation to be raked up, which we thought was ivy trailing down from the tree trunk, was actually wild clematis rooted in the ground, as Sharon informed me later. Many of us turned to pulling the branches up manually and then raking up the debris.

The two pick axes were put to good use on the small brambles. Pretty much everyone had a go, but once Luis and Lucy (on her first GG task - big welcome!) got hold of them, there was no getting them back as they became obsessed with finding and digging out the little rascals. The only issue being that most of them were attached to big root complexes underground which took some major effort to remove.

The morning had one big downer: the Swiss Bakery was closed because of Covid cases amongst the staff. So rather than gleefully writing this report under the title Ham Sandwich Lands - to celebrate the return of the amazingly delicious toasted sandwich to the menu - we had to make do with coffees at Tide Tables.

Next time at Ham Lands will be Saturday 14th May - listing will be up soon.