Red Stinger For Glove

A lovely warm and sunny morning greeted us as we convened at Roll For The Soul for a longer run for today's task.

It was great that we were joined by two belles from Bath, Steph and Mary, fabulous to have you both along! Wanting to get involved we also had Alice, Caroline and Lydia joining us on their bikes to boost our numbers.

With a longer run and plenty to do on the task, we were off at 11 am sharp after the briefest of warm ups, opting instead for a gentle run out of Bristol to Brislington for a brand new task today.

We had been asked by the Project Rainbow to help clear a garden for a group of young people with special needs who are moving in very soon. Five disabled students are moving into a house owned by Bristol city council, as part of a new scheme called Project Rainbow and while the house is pretty much done finished and ready, the grounds need quite a lot of work and the council are quoting a huge amount of money to clear it, which is beyond the project’s budget.

After a 3 mile run, with a hilly twist in the tail, out to the site we armed ourselves with forks, spades, hoes, rakes and a wheelbarrow and got stuck straight into the task.

The grass had recently been cut and so Harriet and Chloe made a fantastic job of raking up the cuttings.

Steph, Mary, Richard, David, Declan, Alice and Lydia headed to one side of the garden and demolished a patch of stinging nettles and weeds, while Neil, Liam and Paul headed to the other side of the garden to tackle more weeds and liberate some lovely sunflowers in the process.

In the meantime, Caroline and myself manned the wheelbarrow and ferried the huge amounts of green waste being uprooted by our fearless gang over to the green waste bin which we managed to completely fill in the 50 minutes or so that we were on site!

Caroline was also doing a wonderful job of liberating several caterpillars and spiders from the waste so that they could be allowed to roam free in the green space around them - bless!

Whilst trying to round up the group, it was no surprise to see Paul shnuck into wheelbarrow duties towards the end (can't believe he allowed us to use it in the first place but he seemed distracted by the sunflowers!), and we eventually persuaded Declan to stop digging and headed back for base.

This was a more challenging run today, particularly given the very warm conditions but everyone did brilliantly both on the run and the task.

Big thanks to you all for coming along to this, to Paul for backmarking, to Steph for leading the stretches whilst I headed inside to do a document check, and bearing with me in my more stressful moments! A nice new task and a job well done!

Cheers all!