A glorious summer's evening joining the Friends Of Bramhall Park to help them to clear the beautiful grounds if the hall and park of pesky Balsam.

We learnt that Balsam, the bright pink popping 'flowers' that we had spent our youth joyfully 'shooting', were actually notorious weeds that can take over parkland and deprive other plants of water.

Harry, our wonderful task owner and head of the Friends Of Bramhall Park, gave us a short and snappy introduction to the technique of killing the dreadful Balsam.

1: Pull gently from the roots 2: Snap beneath the first nodule 3: snap the head 4: break the stem and 5: drop to the floor to rot down.

Simple!

Not deterred by nettles and brambles, we clearer the area of Balsam and then headed back on our 1.5 uphill sprint back to base.

Shout outs to our new recruits, Jen and Charlotte, who got stuck in like GoodGym lifers! Hope

7 runners attended . We prepared by putting on an apron, gloves and the piece de resistance was the putting on of one’s hairnet !! We made tuna , sweet corn and mayonnaise sandwiches followed by grated cheese with mayonnaise sandwiches. The tub of mayonnaise was massive we hardly made a dent in it despite Elaine’s generous helpings !! We ran out of grated cheese so a block of pilgrims choice was grated the old fashioned way using a cheese grater . All of the sandwiches were cut , wrapped and labelled. Finally,all of the washing up , drying up and putting away was done with a full wipe down of all of the surfaces and a quick hoover!! What a great evening with GoodGym Trafford.

Last night a bunch of lovely GoodGym-ers formed a crack team of sandwich makers and put together not one day's worth but TWO day's worth of sandwiches to help Reach Out to the Community cater for over 100 ex rough sleepers who are currently living in local hotels due to the Pandemic...

Here are the key stats from the evening:

3 newbies!

A big GoodGym welcome and whopping well done to:

Tamsin Cosmina Charissa

448 slices of bread buttered

36 eggs turned into egg mayo

16 lots of cheese grated and chicken breast prepped

2 fridges re-arranged and restacked

= 224 sandwiches ✅✅✅

loads of chat and can do attitude = ❤❤❤

Really well done everyone - an amazing effort.

Thanks and see you all again next time, Kate xx