Digging for berried pleasure

The GG Bristol-Malago Berry Maze collaboration continued today as 14 of us travelled over to pull up a few more roots and prepare the way for the mulch. The project aims to realise the designs of a local primary school in producing a maze made up of 15 different varieties of berry. In doing so, the project owner Raluca hopes to bring together the local community both in its construction and in the enjoyment of the completed space.

A lovely fresh Autumn day made our run along the Malago Greenway very pleasant and it was fantastic to welcome along Mhairi from Southwark to join us. Great too to see Liza and Camilla return for their second GG Bristol run - you already feel like part of the GG Bristol family!

Brilliant also to welcome back Kim to a Goodgym Bristol run. Kim and Chris started off this amazing Bristol club and it's lovely to have them along again.

In terms of root digging, it was interesting to watch the improvisation going on as a very mixed assortment of tools were employed to achieve the desired result. The better equipped had spades, but there were also one or two trowels, some rakes and Liam's amazing long handled 'claw of root eradication'.

It's traditional now to find a car part or two and today was no exception with a fan; we also uncovered a few more rocks, the odd shard of glass and a number of worms - to Linlu's obvious delight (not). Petra then informed me that in Borneo, a small Sago worm (or really a grub) know locally as Butod is quite a local delicacy and can be eaten raw. I have to say that at times like these, a vegan diet seems especially appealing.

In the course of an hour we cleared two complete paths and in a last minute intervention, helped to move an particularly large slab of concrete so the way was clear for the rest of the days volunteers.

The maze is really starting to take shape now, so exciting to think that we've been so actively involved in this from the very start and seen the space completely transformed.

Thanks to Alice and Richard for leading the second group and to David for backmarking for me.