Raining sheeps and pig

Driving rain and wind was on the cards this morning for a very determined eight for our 6k run down to Bath City Farm to help our four legged friends.

Todays meeting point was up at Odd Down playing fields and being at the highest point in Bath it soon became clear to the group that the Weather was not on our side today .

A very warm welcome today to Paul and Gary from Goodgym Bristol who have very kindly come across to help us today, Brave or Mad and maybe regretting it a bit once mid task.

No time to waste this morning so with a quick intro and head count we made our way down the hill on the Southside of Bath to Bath City Farm where our host Sara was waiting for us, although she did admit to checking her emails as she thought the weather was so bad that we would surely cancel. No not Goodgym as we run in all weathers.

The original task for today had to be put on hold for better weather as the slope down to the manure and compost was proving to be a bit of a risk with the ground being saturated, so splitting into two groups with Gary and Paul looking the part for this west country task with their pitchforks ( The Two Ronnies sprung to mind) to tackle a huge mound of rotting vegetation that needed shifting to make way for a new willow fence. Lucky for them Cosmo arrived to lend a hand and thankfully the Badger that had been making a route through was nowhere to be seen.

The rest of the team set to laying a new wildlife walk way, sounds easy but it involved digging out the old rotting bark mulch that had become packed down and moving this across the farm to the compost area before filling up the wheel barrels with fresh new bark mulch to lay for a new path.

We had a great relay team going here with Emily and Suzy digging out the old mulch and filling the wheel barrels and Hermione and Alexandra swiftly moving them across the farm before re filling with New Bark Mulch and returning to repeat several times, we had fun.

We spent around 50 minutes on the task as we needed the final 10 minutes to enjoy a cup of tea and some lovely homemade apple cake that was very kindly made for us by our hosts and all in the enjoyed in the farm shelter with it`s roaring wood burner. We will be back very soon but hopefully without the driving rain.

Just enough time here to go and say goodbye to the two sheep ( with no names as soon for the dinner table apparently :-( ) and Mable ( or was it Mathilda ) the farm pig , she looks like me on an average day.

We bid farewell to Cosmo here as he was going in the other direction and we headed back up the hill into a headwind to the playing fields for a stretch out in the shelter of a wall and a Thank you to everyone for coming out in such appalling weather and getting covered in that wonderful mud.

Great stuff here and look forward to coming back to help out some more.