It was a mild Saturday morning as a perfect 10 goodgymers gathered on the Ham Lands for our monthly task helping out the Friends of Ham Lands.

This time around, we were working on a section of pathway through the woods close to the path between Teddington Lock and the road. Sharon was there to welcome us with a wheelbarrow full of tools and we spread out along the pathway armed with loppers, shears and forks to get to work.

There was a good crowd in all, as the Friends had also turned out in force, and we quickly started to make an impact, clearing brambles from the sides of the pathway. Cutting them back was often the straightforward part, but we needed to get their roots up too, to stem the tide of their return. This was a job for forks and the mattock, which we deployed to great effect to dig out the roots.

As usual it was around the 11 o’clock mark that the merry chatter amongst the gang started to turn to the delights of the Swiss Bakery, and half an hour later we downed tools and posed for a group shot before heading off for a well deserved coffee.

We will be back again on 11th March, so sign up here now! https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/helping-the-happy-ham-landers-1d7beb4d-64a9-44a0-aa59-fd0202f18f35

A true honour to deputise for JP at leading this popular monthly task on Ham Lands. Welcome to Rachel and Rob who joined for their first GoodGym session after a 5k at Kingston parkrun.

Some of the jobs we completed were moving a pile of finely cut branches into one of the volunteers' cars and cutting back brambles to make the paths more accessible to walkers. Then as is tradition we headed to 'Flam Lands' for a well earned coffee and a bite to eat at the Swiss bakery. Unfortunately, we couldn't introduce the newcomers to the delights of Flammkuchen because the bakery had a machinery issue - but we'll be sure to put in an order in time for the next task at Ham Lands on Saturday 10th December.