It was a cool and crisp Sunday morning as six, bright eyed and bushy-tailed GoodGymers eventually all converged on the secret-squirrel location of Westcombe Woodlands. It really is that hidden that it took some of the newcomers quite a few attempts to find it.

It truly is a gem of a place nestled deeply in-between Maze Hill Train Station and Seren Park. If you didn’t know it was there, you would never guess that a woodland lay hidden behind the station.

When we got there we were greeted by some of the regular Volunteers of Westcombe Woodland Richard, Nigel and Chris, who after asking us to sign in to their new trendy iPad app, then assigned us various tasks to do. It really was a little bit of everything from weeding, tidying up the raised beds, to pulling out the ivy, to carrying logs up to the top of the wood.

We all set to work and after not very long at all all of the ivy and wood were neatly piled up and the woodland floor was cleared. After this we continued weeding and just generally tidying up the place, clearing twigs and branches that had fallen down during the winter.

After this, Richard gave us a potted history of the woodland. The area was originally gravel pits but in the 1870’s a widow called Mary Roberts brought her family here and cultivated the land to grow fruit orchards and vegetables.

This drew to a close a lovely morning where we all felt we had had a really good work out either pulling up the ivy or carrying the logs and wheelbarrows up the hill. Either way we had all had a good gym session (geddit!!??) and were looking forward to putting our feet up when we got home!