Who!?...... Hogged all the Apples

As Mr Kipling would say AN ECCEEDINGLY GOOD task and scenic 8k run today for A Dirty Dozen at GoodgymBath, picking apples for Dry Arch growers in Bathampton.

Great to have our regular Bristol crew over and the lovely Chloe on her first Bath run. Nice to see Ellen after a long summer break from university. We also had two extra helpers on site with Holly and Kieran doing an appletasktic job.

No need for Matt to warm up today as he'd already ran to us from Bristol, so while he enjoyed a well earned clementine the rest of us got to it with headcount and warm up.

A flat run out today along the canal to Bathampton with just a little extra exercise routine added before passing The George (we didn't go in) and up to the orchard where our hosts were waiting with various apple picking devices.

Tim gave us a demonstration on picking apples and Matt volunteered to grade the apples accordingly for storage, same day pressing and compost only.

It was great to see the different groups working using very different techniques from hand picking, tool picking device, ladders and ropes. In fact one team with Sir Paul shaking a limb actually managed to catch ONE Apple in the net :-)

Goodgym worked hard for two hours today but it was noted by Steph that one or two had gone AWOL for a while with Mim confessing that some of the party had tea cake and biscuits ... ha hum!! and a certain person was reported to be enjoying seconds by a lovely older lady from Dry arch... (matt caught red handed or was it empty basket'd) coconut cake was mentioned.

We smashed our target of 50 crates and managed 57 in total...BOOM!!

The clock struck One, the tools went down, we carried our crates across to the Apple press where Chopping and pressing commenced so that we could enjoy some fresh as it comes juice with a rather delightful Hog Roast.. Yum!!! Not sure how Cosmo got an extra portion though.

Time to say Goodbye and JOG GINGERLY back for a well deserved stretch after a long morning hard at it.

Thanks Mary for the pun and Rosie for backmarking today. Emily for saying that giving me the Apple picking device was a bad move (not sure what she means) Thank you everyone for making today an absolutely brilliant day filled with laughter, you are all amazing and a pleasure to spend time with ... cheers!!