(rag)Wort a lovely evening that was!

On our journey out, we walked or ran the scenic route, about 2km along the Thames Path and through Battlemead Common. Many thanks to Juli for leading the walkers and Gillian for showing the runners the way.

At Battlemead, our task was to go into battle with ragwort, a plant with distinctive yellow flowers, which an be dangerous to grazing animals such as horses, if not kept under control. Battlemead Common has been acquired by RBWM within the last few years and is maintained as a haven for wildlife. Grazing is an important part of the plan, so we needed to pull up as much ragwort as we could.

Armed with gardening gloves and with long trousers to protect against prickles and stingers, we fanned out and hunted down those yellow shrubs. There looked to be a lot and we wondered whether we might end up with sore hands and ant bites, and singing the rag(wort)-time blues, but the ragwort was easy to spot and came up with a good tug and a satisfying pop.

We worked for about 40 minutes and made surprisingly good progress. Check out our group photo to see the heap we had pulled up by the end! That's the magic of GoodGym - teamwork makes the task as easy as falling off a log...or so the phrase goes...Sol can tell us whether it's true as she managed to do both this evening. Glad you're OK Sol!

We then had fun with a quick fitness session including such delights as spotty dogs, aeroplane arms and mountain climbers. Well done everyone for joining in!

Then it was time to walk and run back to our start location and homes, taking the more direct route this time, but still chatting merrily as we went.

Special mentions this evening to Amy R, who did her 10th good deed with GoodGym this evening, and to Matthew, Rachel and Scarlett, who were out this evening for their second good deeds of the day - fantastic!