This Wednesday evening we ran up the all-uphill Dodworth Road to visit our favourite allotment and its illustrious owners from the YMCA.

When we rocked up at the allotment, Marvelous Mike and Awesome Andrea were waiting for us in their car on the road by the allotment. We managed to recognize each other through the darkness and both parties closed in for a meet and greet. It's great that the two of them took the time to come out and meet us this evening as they had to attend to other YMCA duties straight afterwards; their attendance is very much appreciated!

We talked about putting on some community missions at weekends which they are keen for, and even said that we could maybe have our own GG space in the allotment grounds to plant in and tend to. There will also be some fruit pressing and juice making sessions in summer which we can take part in. Yay! Being 'pressed' for time we decided to focus on the task at hand tonight.

Golden moldies!

We had a briefing on what was required from us. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, was to construct a leaf-mold holding area. To accomplish this we had to hammer 4 stakes into the ground to form a square and wrap chicken wire around the outside of them. This was easier said than done! The reason being that the poles/ stakes were very long and the enclosure only needed to be about 80 cm high, meaning the ~6 ft poles would need to be hammered in to approximately their half -way point. We first used a narrow stake-hole digging spade to excavate soil in order to give the vast stanchions a good foothold. Then one of us inserted the stake into the hole and held it in place at arms length about half way down the shaft to keep it straight whilst it was being bashed 'int ground. The other person used a fragmented sledge-hammer to bash away at the top of the pole to drive it into the earth. We took turns with the roles so everyone got a go at everything. The tops of the poles got quite damaged during the intense hammering session, but we managed to hammer them deep enough in. At times we even had to use logs and pallets to stand on to be able reach the top of the poles with a sufficient enough angle. We then packed the soil down around the base of the poles. When we had eventually finished this task, the next thing on the agenda was to wrap chicken wire around the outside of the poles to form an enclosure. The first roll we had managed to go around just 3 of the poles, but luckily there was another little bit of wire mesh in the lock-up that we used to fill the gap. This was again a great team effort with people holding, unfurling and securing the wire.

Leaf-mold area erected, it was time to pack up and set off on the run back. We locked up the container and got ready to set off back to town where there were some fitness activities for us to partake in!

Arriving back in town we found a quiet-ish area at the top of the Glasshouse car park. Here we did bodyweight circuits consisting of:

• Jumping Jacks - 30 seconds
• Squats - 15 repetitions
• Push-ups - 10 repetitions
• Lunges - 10 per leg
• Planking - 30 seconds

Repeating these twice with a short break in between.

After this, we had a quick warm down, a full stretch off, then all went our separate ways.

Good work all!