The mission description said we were to "remove some overgrown vegetation from the back garden". That was a little bit of an understatement! We arrived to find a jungle of mostly giant brambles and ivy, with a tunnel of vegetation to the (unopenable) back gate. Best get stuck in!

After a while of hacking back everything that didn't move, we discovered a greenhouse which had an ivy hat and bramble insides, and started trying to free it. This attracted the attention of the neighbour, who watched and chatted from his window for a while before deciding he'd be more useful actually joining us, so we had an extra pair of hands to attack with, and could get at the ivy from his garden too. His wife also made us a very welcome cuppa.

Mr K also joined in where he could, and between the four of us we started to make some progress, and soon the greenhouse was released from its slumber. We then got carried away and started sawing down the large tree that was also partly inside the greenhouse and partly blocking the back gate. This proved a mammoth task as all the cut parts were suspended in the air by the copious creepers. I also brought down a small section of back wall that was totally ivy infested and loose (oops).

We couldn't really leave the death-from-above tree suspended so we carried on cutting and pulling until it was all down, and the gate finally openable. Finally 2 hours later we piled up the cuttings as best we could (no green bin) and went on our way, thanking our impromptu GoodGym recruit for the help and tea.

Definitely got a good workout on this one! :-)