Float like a butterfly, sting like a weed

An amazing 17 do-gooders met on a sunny evening to help the butterflies and dismantle planters.

In this the news this week:

• Lucia Gobbi smashed Regents Park 10km on Sunday with a time of 43.03.
• GG Camden led by Jess are taking on Regents Park 10km on 7th August if you'd like to join us, sign up here.
• Monthly drinks are tonight (Thursday) at the QE Hall Roof Garden at the Southbank Centre, full details here.

Our tasks for the evening were:

• Helping Skip Garden (4km run overall), which is a self-sustaining urban oasis with a twist - a portable garden that moves to different locations on the King's Cross site as and when land is sold and built on.
  
• Helping the Camden Butterfly Trust (8km run overall), which is a grassroots project that is trying to clear and create space for butterflies to flourish in urban Camden.

Skip Garden Report:

After an active warm up, a game of sprints & high fives and welcoming Olivia to the team we headed on our way.

Passing the crowds watching Andy Murray on the big screen and the Euro Football Tent we made it to Skip Garden in great time!

We met Emma, who's an intern for Skip Garden, she explained that we needed to 'de-earth' four huge planters and dismantle three of them, with all the contents going in a new skip.

Dirty work!

We split into pairs and got going shoveling dirt, wheelbarrowing said dirt and placing it in the skip. Everyone worked at a great pace and we got it all done very quickly. With the dirt emptied we dismantled three of the four planters with hammers and crowbars, and moved the other planter in position for re-planting.

Meanwhile Damaris and Olivia got cracking on turning the compost machine, corrr what an arm workout and smell too!

Camden File

With the tasks complete, Emma impressed, and a group photo taken we headed to the canal for some running games. After running for a mile we stopped, turned around and headed back in a Camden (Indian) File, which involves a lovely steady single file line with the last person in the file sprinting to the front throughout.

Butterfly Society Report by Tom Benson:

Right, so a crack team of seven of us ran all the way to Belsize Park Tube Station to meet James and his Butterflies. The 4km trek was expertly navigated by Chris and by the time we arrived I think we all fancied a pint, due to the fine weather/long run/excitement for the football and tennis going on.

Expertly navigated Chris!

The lovely James, from the Camden Butterfly Trust met us, and briefed us on the task in hand: basically we needed to turn an over grown piece of land on Hampstead Green into a site ready for planting plants that Butterfly’s can inhabit. Armed with only two tools Goodgym Camden did not mess around and used our own tools, our arms and hands, to pull up all the grass we could find.

A haircut!

Therefore turning an over grown plot of land back to its basics, we were essentially giving the plot of land a haircut and rather than use scissors we shaved it all off!! Shout out to James as well for his tip for digging up weeds, folk all four sides then pull it out, turn it upside down and shake it until only the weed remains, I was impressed.

After 25-30 mins James gave us his thumbs up and it was off back to HQ, where football was on my mind and I was often imagining what it would be like to score a 12 yard screamer in the semi-finals of the euros, to sum it up it would have felt great! Hard luck Wales, at least you were better than England!

Another cracker task and great Wednesday evening.

Well done everyone, amazing evening as always. Remember monthly drinks tonight and sign up for next week when we'll be off for our monthly trip to Cecil Sharp House.

PB out.