Prancing in the moonlight

Last Tuesday 25 lovely runners headed off to Quakers Garden to help Sara at Incredible Edible continue to transform this once dingy space into Bristol's first edible garden.

We had a couple of new runners - Olivia who started at Vivo, and Ed who mysteriously appeared at some point in the and joined in the task and the run at the end. Big welcome, guys! I really hope you had a good time.

The initial run was not that long, just a chance to wake up the legs and the lungs. I wanted to get us to the garden before night started to close in, and it became too dark.

As always with this kind of task, the magnitude of the work to do looked pretty intimidating. Armed with brand new gloves and a couple of pruners, the majority of the group fell upon the unloved flower beds with the aim of uprooting as much vegetation as possible, leaving it empty and open for the planting of fruit, veg and herbs. Another part of the group grabbed various tools and set about digging up some stubborn stumps.

After about 30 minutes of clearing, we'd not only make a HUGE dent on the undergrowth, but also the usual random collection of odd items had been amassed. These included a bag of costume jewelry, a bong, and a jar of caviar (which apparently stunk!). I will now therefore proceed to insert a variety of fish puns in to this report...

Task done, it was time to leave that plaice and split in to two group(ers). Group one was led by Gary in a longish run around Bristol docks. Group two was taken by me (Pru, hello!) to Queen's Square, and we had the op-perch-tuna-ty to do some running drills. The drills included high knee skipping, extended leg skipping, and bounding - although during my demo it was quickly renamed to 'prancing'. All these drills are designed to increase your po-tench-ial leg elasticity and strengthen mussels too (was that a fish pun or not? I'd be shellfish not to point that one out).

Group one had a great steady run around the docks and seemed almost turbot-charged when they came in to Queen's Square where we were fin-ishing our drills with a bit of a plank-ton. We all had a good stretch of well worked limbs, and I made a few announcments about forthcoming events - next week's run to Windmill Hill City Farm and asking for help volunteering at the Bristol to Bath Marathon!

Enough fish puns? If you think you cod do better, let me roe as I trout I can get any more in! Or practice your farm puns for next week. See ewe then!