Could we tackle this task? Of gorse we could!

Biking along the very steep and sometimes fast downhill Mousehold roads towards the task, a red goodgym t-shirt speedily ran past me, followed by Penny on her bike. It was time to pick up the pace! Nearly at the task location, fellow Goodgymer Ian set off on his bike having finished the Mousehold group 1 task.

With Katy arriving by car, Stephen and Darren by foot and Penny, Jonathan and Bill by bike, there was just enough time for a catch up until the first group appeared from the trees led by Will, the heath warden, having just finished their task. Brad showed off his battle scars from the task, which was a sign of things to come. With discussion of grapes ready and waiting for us after the task, we were ready to head off to the task’s location in the heath.

There was a brief history lesson midway from Will at the site where St. Leonard’s Priory used to stand in around 1094, but which was demolished in 1538. The story of a boy called William, whose body was found in 1144 nearby was also told and how that affected Jewish people at the time and still attracts interest today from historians worldwide.

Arriving at the location after a long walk, the task was described to us by Will. There would be no bracken removing today, as instead it was time for Gorse to steal the limelight, which it had been doing to the heather which was being hidden by the gorse. We were to cut the gorse as low as possible, with bigger gorse being burnt at a later date. Darren, Penny and Jonathan cracked on with cutting the gorse whilst Bill and Stephen transported any cut gorse by fork. Katy was given a fancy tree/root remover tool to remove strongly rooted plants.

Conversation turned to how people celebrated the new Millennium and how rubbish Norwich’s celebrations had been at the time but with the sky getting a lot darker, it was difficult to continue the task without head torches so it was time to wrap up. There was one more task left though… to find Will’s green bottle top which had dropped somewhere along the path. With everyone looking for it, and phone torches shining, it was felt a dog may have picked it up or perhaps it bounced into some gorse but with Will resigned to transferring the bottle contents to another bottle, fortunately Jonathan found it!

With the task finished and gorse spikes stuck in my shoe and gloves, we walked back through the dark heath towards the car park, where Bill and Kate kindly handed out grapes for everyone to take with them for their journey home. Will thanked us for our work and we eagerly discussed when Goodgym could help again.