Mrs K had asked for some help with keeping their beautiful garden maintained. When Stella and I arrived we could see why it was a big job to keep on top of - what a huge garden!

We set to work, with Stella pulling out weeds and Jenni trimming back the hedges, but the real hard work came when we found brambles.... Lots of spikey and thick branches everywhere!

We pulled out what we could, moving 7 wheelbarrows full of trimmings to open up the garden, but after an hour and a half, we had to call it a day, but not before Stella managed to pull out a huge trailing bramble that had rooted itself in the lawn! 💪

Oh my it was a cold one.

As 7 tough-as-nails GGers gathered on Riverside Drive for our monthly visit to the Ham Lands, much of the talk was over the drop in temperatures and whether one more layer might have been a good idea. Several had already been out for morning runs and maybe didn’t fully appreciate the chill in the air until stationary. Cue copious whingeing and swearing at the wind. Mainly from JP - perhaps not the most tough-as-nails of the group.

The task was similar to previous missions - raking up scrub wood to avoid the grasslands growing too much difficult flora, filling large yellow refuse sacks and dragging them to dump the contents under the trees.

But oh my, it was cold.

There were plenty of rakes to go round and we used the work to get a bit warmer. As usual there were some deeper-rooted rotters needing to be dug out with the pick axe, which Chris and Stella took to with aplomb.

We made excellent progress and had soon cleared a large area and felt that we had begun to deserve the post-Ham Lands visit to the Swiss Bakery that has become our tradition (and the main reason some of us attend this mission, ahem).

With such good work done we treated ourselves to a 10-minute early finish and headed over, managing to secure tables and get our orders in for lashings of hot coffee. Then came the flammenkuchen - on which the unbreakfasted amongst us fell ravenously.

Oh my it was cold, but OH MY, the Swiss Bakery….

Same time next month: second Saturday which will be the 12th March - see you there!