Dracu-lop!

Soooo, let's get this week's pun out of the way first!

It's near halloween, some of you were using loppers - you voted for it, i'll say no more!

It was a fab fun run and task today on a beautiful morning over at the Manor Valley Woods where we met up with the brilliant Martin, who armed us with a set of top class tools, as well as giving us a potted history of the area.

We discovered that the Malago river, flows underground through a tunnel in the area, just by where the group photo shot was taken and that the area is mentioned in the Doomsday Book and that the woods themselves are ancient.

We had Alice, Caroline and Liam combining loppers and bow saw to cut back stray sproutings from a tree trunk, making it look all nice and tidy.

We had Fi, Will and Alex attacking an angry mass of brambles, uncovering all sorts of tubing, plastic containers and a small bike in the process.

And we had Matt, Chris, Lexi, Sarah and David heaving a load of branches and twigs from an area where a tree had been cut down, before heading into the ancient woods to perform a cutting and clearing exercise in there.

Meanwhile the tree trimmers had joined the bramble bashers and within our allotted hour we had helped Martin and his ace team of volunteers to make the area a little easier on the eye.

With Caroline, Liam and Alex taking a detour off to find some apples and Matt and Will going off to enjoy some hill running, we somehow all managed to get back to base together including a speedy little jaunt down Broad Street, where one or two competitive juices certainly seemed to be trickling, if not flowing!

With stretches and a warm down we congratulated Fi on becoming the latest Bristol GG centurion with Sarah kindly doing the customary honours in handing over the centurion costume which Fi enthusiastically donned - well done Fi, you are an absolute star!

Thanks all for coming and thanks Chris for backmarking and Matt for doing some extra running doing a recce to try and find the volunteer group - that was fun today and you are all brilliant!

Cheers!