Thorn In My Slide

13 runners ran 6k along the Malago Greenway to help with a tidy up of the area

Meeting at Roll For The Soul with a few now opting for a quick coffee before the off, we welcomed along Sophie who was joining us for the first time today.

After warming up in usual West Country style - although today we were shooing in slow-worms! - and an introduction to what was awaiting us today 12 of us headed off towards Bedminster. Having had so many tasks in Victoria Park recently, I inadvertently took us on a little detour, but most agreed this was a nicer route and we were soon back on track. We picked up Nick Baker along the way so you could say that our dozen became a Baker’s Dozen!

Approaching the meeting point for the task, you could actually hear the cheers as the red and black shirts (quite a lot of black shirts today) headed along the Malago Greenway, where we were greeted by our host, the lovely Raluca, who outlined the task to us and gave a thorough health and safety briefing as well as some snazzy Hi Viz to wear!

We were asked to head down a track just on the other side of the river where we split into two groups, starting at different ends of the track.

One group got busy, clearing out the litter from an area of bushes and trees and had soon filled lots of bin bags with all sorts of rubbish including a wok and a parasol.

The other group was somewhat more stationary, discovering an area that had not only been the victim of flytipping, but was also overgrown with some very thorny brambles. Managing to locate some spades to hack at the thorny shield, we managed to pull out a slide from the undergrowth which acted as a great shute to drop the objects that needed to be cleared down. These included a fence, lots of plastic boxes and a clothes line (one of those whirlygig things).

With time running out we managed to fill up some wheelbarrows (don’t tell Paul B!) and get all the rubbish to a collection point at the end of one section of the Greenway.

Smashing the task in an hour we were richly rewarded with donuts, cookies, fruit and sweeties before the usual group shot, a thanks and goodbye with Raluca, before heading back to base (thanks to Will for dashing back to return the wheelbarrow before we left).

There, in true democratic style, we had three puns to put to a vote:

Thorn In My Slide

Who’s Clothes Line Is It Anyway?

Wok me up for malago-go

The winner by a landslide was your report title for today – just as well as we really didn’t want a hung pun today!

We wished good luck to all those taking part for Bristol in the GG Olympics today, to Deb, Paul and Dave at the Bradley Stoke 10k, Mel at Chew Valley 10k and Alice who is taking on the Bristol Olympic Distance Triathlon tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone for coming along today. To Richard for the extra photos and to Chris and David for running with Sophie on her first adventure with us – hope you enjoyed it Sophie!

Hope to see you all soon.