After a very soggy day we were delighted to find a dry-ish evening waiting for us in Queen Square with Richard leading the runners on a longer route and Richard back-marking, catching us walkers at pedestrian lights and having the shed open by the time we walkers arrived.

The massed rakes and brushes were carried to the joyous wheelbarrow park (soooo many wheelbarrows, some very useful, some very pretty and some in the middle) and into the wildlife garden where wed previously spread much woodchip. Our task was to clear the leaf fall and leave the path surfaces intact - normally pretty difficult but the rain had the leaves sticking to each other and bot the ground which, combined with our skill set, meant leaves were quickly off the paths and onto the plant beds and compost heap.

David athletically vaulted* the fence to the pond and cleared the pontoon whilst Jason mastered lifting large quantities of leaves without the help of tools.

Katie and Ed proved dab hands with the rakes, skimming the paths to make numerous leaf piles whilst Alice arrived having tracked us down with her amazing bloodhound senses.

We'd heard the ducks, seen a very big black cow (seeing only its eyes at first in the torchlight - eek) and experienced proper farmyard smells as we worked around more of the path we'd dug out a couple of years ago (or was it just last year?).

With multiple barrows of leaves moved to (hopefully!) more useful/less disruptive places, we tidied our tools back into the shed and set off back to Queen Square and on to Workout to taste test flapjacks with a huge pot of tea - perfect!

*climbed over very carefully

It was lovely to see a bunch of red t-shirts ready to help Vaguely Northern Darren to enjoy his 300th deed - congratulations, Darren!

We had our litter pickers, we had our recyclables and non-recyclables bags and off we set, the 7 runners outnumbering the 3 walkers. The runners kindly went for speed on the newly-reopened Chocolate Path so the walkers would have some litter to p-p-pick up like the Penguin wrapper Arron found - How do penguins cook pancakes?*

Jason was quick on the draw along the path whilst Melanie acted as the torch for the group - a vital role if anyone asks.

As we approached the Create Centre at B-Bond we saw lots of red t-shirts heading our way and we'd found the runners, armed with their litter pickers and bags of rubbish and recycling accumulated from the firework and party area on Brunel Walk. And they'd taken some really lovely photos of The Bridge at night.

We then had the familiar "where shall we leave the bags" dilemma, trying to find a bin that would be accessible for collection. First, we stopped at the Create Centre's HUGE recycling art with GoodGymmers gamely recreating the letters in human form before starting back to Queen Square on time to get to Eats at Pieminister - it's officially pie weather, an upside of late autumn.

With pickers still collecting small bits of litter there was suddenly much excitement asninstead of findong a Bristol Waste bin we found a Bristol Waste truck stopped at the traffic light and successfully flagged it down to be able to chuck our rubbish (and recycling) straight onto the back with photos to prove it! The Bristol Waste guys seemed only slightly bemused.

The runners then passed over their pickers so they could run back and the walkers heroically carried all the pickers back to Workout in the unexpected deluge before travelling on to dry out at home or whilst eating lovely pie.

Happy 300th, Darren!

*they use their flippers