Two Ways to keep Bristol on the Straight and Narrow

Our plans had to be changed today as the early morning weather was not conducive to the second task that was planned - overnight and morning rain meant that our stencilling and painting task on the Bristol to Bath Railway Path had to be postponed.

No matter, as we knew that the A-maze-ing Malago Greenway Berry Maze project would be grateful of some extra pairs of hands as they try to get their project finished, so it was great that we had a good turnout today to support two tasks.

It was wonderful to welcome Gillian, the GoodGym Older People Operations Team Leader, who travelled over from London this morning and brought along Alasdair and Tom for their first GG experience and also Oliver, who had come along with Anna, for his first taste of the action too. Hope you all enjoyed doing things in Bristol fashion!

Our main task today was a completely new one organised at Narroways Hill - a little grassy & wooded ridge in the neighbourhood of St Werburghs. When British Rail threatened to sell it to developers in 1997 it caused such a reaction that 800 local people demonstrated to save it, thousands signed petitions & wrote letters and money was raised so it was purchased by Bristol City Council.

Nowadays, the site is looked after by Narroways Millennium Green Trust, the charity set up to administer and manage the site now that it has Millennium Green status. All the work needed to maintain the site and keep it available to be enjoyed by the local community (and wildlife!) is carried out by a small group of volunteers and enthusiasts.

A group of ten of us headed over to Narroways Hill and enjoyed a wonderful and varied task, including:

• Taking a railway sleeper up to Narroways Hill - we needed a few rest breaks for this as it was a particularly heavy sleeper!
• Gathering up Buddleia prunings in Church Field and using them to block a gap in the hedge of the Community Gardens - this looked amazing when it was done.
• A litter pick of the area - lots of trash, but the removal of old tents, cardboard, wooden pallets, plastic piping and the usual bottles and cans, had the place looking much tidier.
• Cutting back Ash seedlings and chopping out some of the brambles to stop these encroaching on the grassy area.

Looking down from the top of the hill, the red shirts looked like a particularly busy set of worker ants determined to get the job done before lunchtime.

Harry and the team of wonderful NMGT members seem delighted with what we managed to achieve and it would be great to be able to go back again soon to help some more - lots to do here in this green and very pleasant bit of land.

It’s a really nice flat run too along the Frome Valley Walkway, through Riverside Park.

Halo? Goodgym here!

Meanwhile over at the Berry Maze the team were hard at work removing the last of the brambles and berried rock so that mulch could be liberally applied to the paths and the way was clear for the berry plants to finally be installed. Tom and Alasdair worked at one of the toughest bramble sections while Davd and Gillian dug up and raked some of the neighbouring patches. Emma showed some particular versatility switching from digging to raking to stone lifting to wheelbarrowing at regular intervals (thanks for letting me have a go at the wheelbarrow, Emma).

All the while, Jack and Caroline offloaded rock and onloaded mulch, with Jack adding an old phone to the unusual finds accrued so far on the project!

Another fantastic Malago morning.

Back at Roll For The Soul, we wished good luck to our runners taking part in the Oxford Half Marathon on Sunday, chatted about the upcoming group runs and missions and congratulated Alex on becoming the latest GoodGym Bristol centurion - hitting 100 good deeds with today’s run. Nice one Alex!