On a lovely sunny Wednesday evening, Anne was already waiting outside the sports centre as Adam arrived with a coffee to sharpen his energy levels.

While waiting for the other runners, Anne was talking Adam through the route she was thinking of as she had passed plenty of litter.

It wasn't long before Julie arrived and we had a quick catch up as Kirsty arrived. We decided that we will start with the run and plogging as we can keep Melanie updated with our location as we move along. So from the leisure centre we headed towards Woking park along the stream. Onces we got to the bridge we quickly crossed it only seeing very little litter to pick up. We quickly made it down the path to Elbridge Lane. There were lots of plastic bottles which were thrown over the wired fence making it tricky to get hold of but the GoodGyming persistence paid off and we manned to get most of it.

We then turn to go back into Woking park as we recalled the route being messy in places around the parkrun route. Once in to wooded area there were pieces of litter in little spots to the left and right as we made our way through the wooded area, as the litter became less and less which was a great thing to see something else took our notice!

As we followed the path around to join the stream we quickly noticed some Himalayan balsam along the stream. The first batch we saw was too close to the steam bank to try and tackle and remove it but we quickly came across some more further down. Before a word was said we all dived in and started removing them, and quick stamping then down. It was at this point Melanie joined us feeling a little irritated being late from work. She was very ready to get involved and stomp down on some Himalayan balsam and found hearing the crinkling sounds of crashing the Himalayan balsam rather therapeutic.

Once we noticed we had been crushing the Himalayan balsam for a long time! We decided to get back to plogging on our way back to the lake centre with the two full bags of litter we collected.

Awesome work from Woking GoodGymers 😁

Rob, Stephanie and Julie were working with Woking Environment Action (WEAct) at St John's Lye. At the edge of the wood near the playing field there is a pond which had become overgrown with willow and it was barely getting any light. Due to the dry weather there was no water so we were able to walk on the soft mud, avoiding some tiny froglets, and remove large branches of willow that had grown across the pond. Stephanie and Rob did a great job of cutting the smaller branches, sawing some larger ones and getting all the brash to the habit piles being created in the undergrowth nearby. Within 1 1/2 hours the pond space was clear and looking great. Now all it needs is a good downpour to fill the pond and it will be a great feature for visitors to the area, both human and other species.

Looking forward to our next task on Wednesday, we will be plogging!