I promised ditches, but ditches get stitches, so instead of getting the hump we got on with flattening one (from a badly refilled ditch admittedly).

James and Paul had already got started when I arrived and looked very happy, and after a quick briefing (make hump flatter, don't cover grass) from Sarah the rest of us got cracking too.

It was quite hard work digging into the baked clay, and then chucking it down to the low end to fill in the ex-ditch (much as Debs disapproved of us only throwing it into the middle and her then having to rake it down to the end). There were also a few accidental (and a couple of deliberate) clod-hits on the raking team (damn their insubordination 😉)

Louise managed to ignore the flying clay and continued blissfully raking perfect smooth patches while all around her was lumpy madness, and similarly Cara and James were chopping away at their respective coalfaces in a quietly efficient way. Mitch made a caldera and then breached the flanks, while reminiscing about his geology degree and poor vulcanology marks, and Debs joined the edge-diggers only to realise it was actually quite hard work and issued a begrudging apology 😁

Despite all the power grabs and technique backchat, we made excellent progress and soon enough Sarah was happy that we'd sufficiently flattened the mound to stamp it down (cue the total silence of the focused stamp dance) and even spread some wildflower seeds in the smooth raked sections (thanks to Louise). As a nice happy ending it turned we'd made a perfect heart shape ❤️