Stakey Breaky Arch

A fine nine GoodGymmers ran 4km to Victoria Park to help a community group carry out some maintenance work in the first of a two parter.

It was fitting that Chris Lewis, led us all over to Victoria Park and came up with today's pun to mark the event of his 150th good deed - well done sir!

We were also celebrating Fi hitting the landmark of 50 good deeds in the week, nailing the mark with a mid-week coach run - nice one Fi and we'll look forward to seeing you sporting your new black T-shirt soon!

A shortish run saw us meet up with today's wonderful host, Gav, who is part of the Victoria Park Wildlife Group, who explained our task to us.

We would be needing one group, armed with a tree saw and loppers to cut down branches in the coppice to act as stakes for the borders of the wildflower beds in the park so that these beds stop getting mown down by the grass cutters.

Lisa, Sarah, Fi and Chris were asked by Gav to cut 30 stakes and in no time at all had smashed this target - Gav admitted that he had set this figure as he thought this would be around the capability of the group given the time we had available and so our fab four raised the bar to end up with probably double this figure. You could say the stakes were high! (Thanks Dom!)

The second group of Will, David, Paul and Dom, were asked to start carrying out repairs to the willow tunnel which we had helped to construct last year - this involved taking out the dead willow branches from the tunnel and using these to act as a central line running along the top of the willow tunnel, and then retying the thriving willow branches onto this to give back some shape and a greater tidiness to the structure. By the time our time was up the tunnel was looking great again - where there's a willow there's a way! (Thanks again Dom!)

Everyone then carried the stakes over to a yard for storage until we use these next week to make the borders for the wildflower beds.

Saying bye to Gav, Chris led us home through a refreshing rain shower for stretches and announcements - including congratulations to our two milestone achievers, Riga and Two Tunnels races runners and a good luck wish to Lisa who is running the Edinburgh Half Marathon next weekend.

We're continuing the Victoria Park theme next week with some flyering for Helpful Peeps on Tuesday and part two of today's task next Saturday - it's gonna be great, so let's make it a date!

As we like to say in Brizzle - "Proper job gang!"