Operation GazeBodge: Nailed it!

8 merry goodgymmers arrived at the Naburn hut to "fix a gazebo", which definitely involved buying wood but otherwise was a bit of a mystery task.

The gazebo turned out to be a rather broken and sad looking mess of a couple of old cloth gazebos held up with bits of string, wood and a bird table, and carrying a large pool of water.

Never daunted we first set to emptying the mess of water, which definitely didn't pour all over the very person who was joking about pouring it onto people (Max). Once done we assessed the situation and started to try to shore up the broken struts as best we could using the wood Peter had bought. This definitely involved a little too many cooks, a lot of bodging and a fair amount of straightening one end only to make another collapse (to me, to you). The spirit level was definitely ditched fairly early on.

Somehow nobody was maimed, and we started to see some progress with our various techniques, including; nailing the metal struts directly to new bits of wood (Max again), cable ties, wire, hammers, use of long branches, and tethering to nearby trees (Rich was very pleased with this). We even fixed the leaky roof with the remains of the second gazebo cloth, poked over using long sticks (somehow this actually worked).

Meanwhile a sub-team of the more sensible amongst us (Laura, Louise and Jackie) set to raking up all the dead slippy leaves around the kids play area.

We even decided it was safe enough to stand under for the team photo "would you let your child play in here?" (Ed)

Lots of positive feedback from the team and fellow goodgymmers afterwards: -I'll be surprised if it lasts the night -It should be ok providing there isn't a light shower -Or gentle breeze -Should we just schedule the same task again for next week when it's fallen down?

Peter however was very pleased with our efforts and assured us we'd done a great job (low standards?)