Welcome to Sharon for their first GoodGym task!

We were back with The Bee Sanctuary for their weekend volunteering session in Highfield Park. The weather was more mixed but thankfully the rain stayed away so we could continue with priming and painting the entrance gates. Sharon, Michael, and Ben completed painting the already primed fence to the one side of the entrance that after a couple of coats, was looking much more inviting compared with the peeling black gates from the previous week.

After a tea & coffee break, Sharon and Ben managed to apply metal primer to the remaining fence at the entrance, ready for a coat of green paint to complete the job in the none-to-distant future.

Great to be back to and to complete some of the painting tasks for the group. We'll be back, perhaps for more digging or heavy duty gardening tasks in the future.

What a wonderful weekend of weather to get out in the fresh air!

Peter, Jordan, and Ben came out to help The Bee Sanctuary on the southern tip of Highfield Country Park in Levenshulme for their regular Sunday volunteering session.

With our now apparently renowned expertise in painting, we were tasked with preparing and priming a few areas to tidy up the volunteer shed and the entrance gate. Jordan and Ben took turns climbing the ladder to paint a border on the volunteer shed, a new installation for the group. The volunteer shed was installed with a compostable toilet and used to store their tools and, important for this session, their paint. The roof was also a "living roof" with vegetation on top too. Between us, we managed to apply primer to the full circumference.

Peter on the other hand was tasked with chopping back some brambles near the entrance and scraping away the paint from the metal bars. There always seemed to be more paint to scrape off! Once ready, all three of us applied zinc-based primer to the metal railings once clean and dry and managed to cover a decent section, with the paint pot nearly empty once we had finished for the day.

In between painting and scraping, we took a full part in the tea/coffee break with biscuits and Sheila, the lead volunteer for the group, gave us a grand tour of the Bee Sanctuary site. Covering several wildflower meadows, three ponds, plus plenty of dead hedges and hedge boundaries, there really has been a huge amount of work over the years to clear the mono-culture of brambles with a more biodiverse area of grasses, flowers, and wildlife. There was also a quiet "Forget-me-not" area for remembering those who had passed for local people.

We will certainly be back soon to help out and hopefully finish the painting we had started. It was also great to meet the other volunteers and Loki who did his best to help out in between chasing sticks.