Whoa, black berry, bram-a-lam

'We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us'

Hear, hear! Last night's run was in partnership with The Great Get Together as are all of this week's GoodGym sessions across the country. It is an initiative founded by the family and friends of Jo Cox who was killed on 16 June 2016 and was created to reject divisive politics and bring our communities together and celebrate all that unites us.

Last night we used our run to celebrate kindness, respect and all we have in common! #moreincommon

16 of us were not put off the day's earlier biblical downpour and successfully dodged the rain for our evening run, we meandered through the parks to help The Ealing Transition Community Orchard tackle the brambles!

After collecting tools en route we wheelbarrowed our way to meet Grant who helps manage the garden and had a thorny issue for us to take on...

Getting to the root of the thorny issue...

Our instructions were clear, all brambles out, everything else in! So we quickly got to work snipping away the brambles in amongst the wildflowers as close to the root as possible to prevent them shooting up again too quickly. Some of us even went as far as pulling out the whole root entirely!

GoodGym 1 - 0 Brambles!

As the task is a lovely short run away we got lots snipping time this evening so after 40 minutes (and a few scratches!) the garden was a much less spikey place to be. We finished up by wheelbarrowing the tools back to the shed and stopping off in Walpole park for a round of sprints and squats. We had one group of power walkers and one group of sprinters, both equally hard at full effort! By the time we were done everyone was very out of breathe, great job all round!

With all that done and dusted we'd built up an appetite but with the earlier rain we called off our picnic and headed for a pubnic instead!.We all shared food, had some drinks and celebrated all we have in common. What a wonderful way to share an evening!