Tuesday 9th July
Report written by Melanie Young (she/her)
Weren't we the lucky ones with a weather forecast updating from thunder and lightening to no rain at all! I'm pretty sure this is also why our numbers swelled from 5 sign ups at midday to 13 when we were arriving in Queen Square, sadly minus Vaguely Northern Darren as he was poorly. But everyone there had signed up, so Melanie didn't need to hunt for any email addresses, revealing embarrassing nick names when personal email addresses were created!
It was great having very experienced GoodGymmers (from back when it all began in Bristol) alongside our newer members and this was a firs time to Brunswick Cemetery for Freya, James and Bruce, with all the health and safety warnings that are needed.
Paul led his band of runners who arrived just as the walkers were staring to take up tools with our target being the disappearing (from being found by GoodGym) spiral path, with errant weeds to remove edges to be sought, teams taking on the challenge at the top, middle and bottom of the spiral whilst Di from the Friends group continued the dogwood-bindweed clearance and Bruce tried his hand (and bare arms and legs) at nettle-bindweed clearing until it all got a bit too tingly.
Someone had nicked the empty dumpy sack we'd hidden in the park just a couple of hours earlier, so we were back to black sacks and the rubble bags pre-purchased in a Brilliant Exhibition of Forward Planning (BEFP). And the rubble bags are a nice blue colour, so that's all good.
Everyone was very industrious as we even saw a bit of blue sky celebrating our achievements at, yes, finding edges and making the gravel look much more shiny, with top stomping by Freya who'd been practising the previous week in Totterdown.
When we'd had enough (running late as we're SO committed), we headed back to Workout and ClubHaus for our July GoodGym Eats whilst supporting Valè through the difficulties of France's early goal against Spain in the men's Euro 2024 semi-final, ordered some lovely burgers despite ClubHaus being a bit busy with football fans and continued the general chat about Very Important Things, sat outside by the water.
We really are very lucky people (vlp).
Bristol
Conservation work and conversation