The summer season at the walled garden is well and truly over now, and even though this was a beautifully warm summery morning our task was very much an autumnal kind of tidy up.

Basically weeding. Clearing up an overgrown grassy area, and pulling up lots of brambles.

All in all a lovely revitalising session at the beautiful space. Come visit some time 😀

It is a bright time for the GoodGymmers. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.

Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Meyrick have established a new secret base on the remote ice world of The George at Bathampton.

The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding the young GoodGymmers - Aaron, Tanya, Emily and Vicky, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space....

That being said, it was wonderfully successful ride on Sunday despite the unsettled weather. Starting at checkpoint 1, on the river opposite Lidl, zero GoodGymmers were picked up but many rebel forces were repelled. Checkpoint two was much the same, no GoodGymmers at this checkpoint but several AT-ATs were disabled before moving on to Checkpoint 3.

Here, at The George in Bathampton, the rest of the GoodGymmers gathered to embark on the rest of the journey. There was one complication to the plan, in that we were planning to meet General Helen at Bathampton Mill at one. However, Lieutent Emily was confident we could still do the Two Tunnels and rendezvous with our erstwhile leader at the appointed time.

X - Wing pilot Vicky suggested we make a detour after the tunnels to speed up our return journey, and with that agreed we had our plan!

It was a wonderful ride, great countryside, the odd puddle and the excitement of cycling high speed through the two tunnels to boot. We did make our engagement on time, and avoided all of those pesky remote probes send by Darth Vader - so the plan was a good one. Next time, Episode VI - The Return of the Cycles.

8 Goodgymers spent their evening at one of their more regular haunts dubbed on the website as ‘a Secret Garden’ (in Widcombe). No, it’s not THE Secret Garden, you won’t find Mary Lennox playing there. Rather, it’s an old Baptist Burial Ground looked after by The Bath Preservation Trust, cheery! (It is actually quite lovely).

As a few GoodGymers ran their way to the Garden/Burial Ground, discussions were had around what our tasks today would be, as we had a larger group than normal. Would we or wouldn’t we be removing bind weed and brambles? How do we feel about pulling up bind weed and brambles? Suffice to say, and you won’t be surprised, we did pull up an abundance of bind weed and chopped down many a bramble. Some of us felt sad for said plants, I suppose they’d gone to all that effort to choke the life out of the other plants, and bind weed flowers look pretty. The brambles were even showing off their bounty of blackberries. We mused about uses for bind weed: could we fashion a rope? Did it have medicinal properties? Interestingly the leaves do contain a molecule that can treat hypertension and is also known to be a diuretic, among other things… so not all bad! (Thank you Wikipedia) The flowers are also important for sweat bees! (I’ll let you research those and no it’s not a typo).

But I digress… all GoodGymers assembled we took to the task assigned, with gusto, and as usual we cleared a sizeable space of bind weed and brambles within our allotted hour. Making light work of it if I do say so myself. Richard, Jerr and Ruth even managed to remove a blanket of the stuff; allowing flora and fauna underneath to be free and to grow and prosper, until the bind weed and brambles take hold again, and we will be back in a year clearing the same area! We will be ready!

Another good evening’s work team! Till next month at the not so secret, secret garden.