Thistle do nicely!

After our names and numbers and a quick brief about the task, we'd already caught up on everyone's mission sign ups and mission cancellations (which was a shame, hopefully it can be rearranged!) whilst we sat in the beer garden/meeting point waiting for everyone to arrive, without a drink I'll add, we then popped into Crystal Palace Park for our warm up.

The run to St John's Church was quicker than I expected which meant more time for the task and upon arrival, everyone who hadn't been there before, marveled at the size of the church and I can see why they needed such a big Christmas tree last year - everyone was keen for that to be a task again this year! We weren't going to be inside the church today, but instead in the gardens.

Helen was there to brief us and divide the tools between the group. The main objective was the clear the weeds, nettles and thistles. Everyone got stuck in and carefully divided themselves by those wearing shorts avoiding the huge nettles/thistles!!

We had an excellent team clearing the large nettles and weeds, with occasional ouch being heard when they came across a particularly spiky plant and the rest of the group clearing the beds to allow the volunteers to have a clear space to carry out some planting.

Towards the end of the task, Tim had dug up a rather large root in one of the beds, unfortunately and despite much perseverance the root couldn't be removed and that'll be a job for the volunteers in the coming weeks.

Two trips to the compost pile later and retrieval of a trowel from the compost heap, we began to clear the paths, tidy up and put the tools away.

Before we left, Helen quickly told us the history of the garden and that it is completely maintained by volunteers, if anyone fancies joining the volunteers to help maintain the garden then they meet on a Wednesday afternoon and I'm sure they'd be grateful of any help!

Group photo taken, we were on our way back to the start point and back in the park was did a quick plank circuit - great effort everyone! And after we decided to stretch in the park rather than next to the busy road!

Thanks for having me and it was lovely to pop over to another borough. The next group run is at Forest Hill Station - sign up here.

Kim x