More brambles. More cutting. It was muddy. There are only a limited number of ways to describe this. See previous reports for more narrative:

• Thorn in my side. And in my shoe. And inside my gloves. And…
• Bramble bashing buddies

Warm welcome

But we will mention new GoodGymer, Tanya, who we met today. Welcome Tanya :)

Unfortunately due to confusion over the location only 2 could fight the good fight against the evil reign of Bramble dominance at the forest garden in Batheaston, after sweet talking the spicky little buggers back from their line of advance we made good headway, and real progress was felt by the end, we even had the help from a energetic little Boy who was determined to rescue every last can, bottle, plastic bag and ice cream wrapper along with using his sword (doggy looking stick) to add our advantage on the bramble front. This is definitely not over and extra forces will be needed if the war on Rubus fruticosus is to be won …

Four of us convened at Batheaston playground to help our friends from Grow Batheaston make inroads in clearing some scrubland adjacent to the park.

There will be nettles said the brief. You will be clearing brambles said the brief. Wear protective clothing it went on...

Dan and I did the "man thing" and turned up in running shorts. Dan did the additional clever thing of letting me and Natalie get right in to the brambles, while he and Ellie cleared and piled up our cuttings onto heaps for rotting down. (Natalie had read the brief and came fully denimed-up and sturdy-booted for the task in hand)

We started out on a patch of brambles which were conveniently right next to a large patch of nettles. I noticed this by the repeated application of walking through the nettles with bare legs...

The brambles were deep. so deep in fact that the lower layers had died back. This had the bonus that it could mostly be pulled out without needing cutting. I quickly learned that if I pulled that out, then I could climb deep inside the bush and cut the living bramble growth at its base. The brambles were very thorny. I noticed this by... well you get the idea...

We had an enjoyable time, helped make a big dent in the area of brambles, and it was, er, lovely to release my inner caveman and come away covered in scratches and stings.

We’d scheduled a Group Run to Batheaston Secret Garden, which given its (not entirely secret) location made for a decent distance run - nevertheless three of us turned up for this fun mission.

On arrival at the garden our first task was to wander up the road and fetch a little mini shed thing with somebody had donated to the garden. First problem was to get the shed out of the donor’s garden and given it was too big for their garden gate, that involved lifting it over a wall onto the adjacent garage roof and then trying to get it down from the roof.

That challenge overcome, we next had to carry it down the Batheaston high street for a few hundred yards, as the pavement was hemmed in by cars and therefore too narrow an option.

Most of the car drivers were helpful - I guess a shed blocking the road isn’t too common a sight, even in Batheaston!

After that we did a spot of replanting, and then set to work weaving a wicker enclosure - a funky new addition to this fun little garden.

And then we ran home again.

We returned to the Secret Garden to help Grow Batheaston with their continuing efforts on the area at the back of the site.

I arrived a few minutes early and was shown one last fir tree and an area of sedge which we'd managed to miss last week. Luckily the spot of rain we'd had over the last couple of days seems to loosened up the ground a bit, and after, ooh at least two minutes all these hanger-ons were all uprooted.

I was joined by Dan, Ellie and Vanesa and we set about weeding, tidying, path cleaning, and some bulb planting.

But the showpiece work was obviously the continued work on the dead hedge at the front of the plot. The involved weaving a fence around it, building it up, hiding all the untidy sedge cuttings in the middle of it, and roofing it with some more sticks. It looks a treat, and hopefully will be a nice home for whatever critters it will attract as it mulches down.

Welcome

A warm welcome to Vanesa, another Bath GoodGym newcomer. It was lovely having you along.

Five of us headed down to the Batheaston Secret Garden to help give it some TLC. Despite the name, it seems pretty easy to find, and we all arrived there on time to be given the task of helping clear the, um, "less formal" area at the back of the garden including weeding and pulling up a whole lot of Lime Sedge which had taken over in parts. What transpired turned into a bit of a two Ronnies sketch...

"Have you got any Os?" asked Emily, in her best Ronnie Corbett accent

"I’ve got Ls, and some Hs" offered Meyrick, who doesn't always know his Rs from his elbow..

"No, hoes," exclaimed Emily, "hoes for weeding."

They didn't have any hoes, but there were various digging implements for us to use, with which most of us set about clearing the sedge. After trying various methods involving digging tools, the majority settled into a much more efficient system of brute-forcing it up in clumps with our bare hands, which meant we managed to clear the sedge in pretty good time.

That allowed us to start on clearing some Leylandii trees which were starting to talk hold, some maybe person-high already. Although their roots aren't actually that deep, this job definitely needed tools to help, so Jer took a fork and started trying to lever them out of the ground, before unfortunately snapping the end off his implement!

"Have you got four candles?" he enquired.

"No, but I've got a torch on my phone if that'll help?" offered James.

"No! Fork 'andles! Handles for forks," said Jer. "I've had an accident!"

"Did you need a P?" asked Meyrick, still stuck in the earlier part of this run report.

... anyways, in spite of the, err, questionably fictitious hilarity of this fun mission, we did manage to clear a large area at the back of the Not-So-Secret Garden, and finish up another really successful GoodGym mission, readying the site for the next work they’ll be doing there, and along the way we managed to build a really rather impressive "dead hedge" with all of our cuttings, which will apparently decompose down, and provide an excellent habitat for some of the local wildlife.

Warm welcome

A warm welcome to GoodGym first-timer Sam, who's probably read this far and is starting to wonder what sort of weird sitcom cult he's got himself into....