Luckily the lady from Thames Landscape Strategy was there to Guide us from Marble House to Richmond via the Thames Path.

The weather was nice, we got to smell the fresh water, feel leaves and taste the local drinking establishments.

A lovely group exercise meeting our friends and new people.

That was the question on everyone's mind as they lined up on Richmond riverside, waiting to be assigned a specific bat to count. Soprano, common, nathusius pipistrelle, plus daubentons, noctule and a few other species. We set out bat detectors to their corresponding frequency and lined up on both sides of the river for the final count of the year.

After a slow start the Twickenham side crew found a hotspot at the far side of Marble Hill Park. The walk ended near the White Swan pub after we made about 20 stops every couple of hundred metres. We then marched all the way back to Richmond and convened at the White Cross where Ken very generously got two rounds in.

Meeting at Tap Tavern for an early evening run to Twickenham, the group dusted off the cobwebs of sitting at desks with some key stretches while Liz did the intro. A warm welcome was offered to Nina who was joining for her first task. Both a running and walking group then set off across Richmond Green, treated to some flashes of action from across the spiderverse as the sunset blazed through the sky above the river.

A run that is mostly beside the river is always a treat and one of many reasons why we look forward to visiting Lynde House Care Home. There is always a happy welcome for us too as we run down the quiet back streets to the home. In the past we have helped prep and paint garden furniture, build raised sleeper beds and treat bird tables. This evening though we were handed feather dusters and paint brushes to tackle the spiders who were trying to get in on some of the lovely care at the home too, around the windows and doorframes.

There are a lot of windows on the building and it worked well to have a good sized team on the case. Eight arms would definitely not have been enough! The spiders were clearly very comfortable and there were egg sacks in every crevice. We spun our way around the building, being careful not to disturb residents who were settling in for the evening.

As spiders know well, many hands make light work and the team managed to reconvene by reception ready for some suitably Halloween-style photos by headtorch before completing a neat 5km run by heading back to the Tap.

A cold but beautifully sunny morning greeted a magnificent 7 GGers beside the river to lend their help to mending a damaged fence, for the Petersham Environment Trust.

Ken gave the instructions, which were unusually full of holes. The task was to dig a hole for a new post at one end of a short stretch of fence, and to dig a hole around the broken and rotten post at the other end to remove and replace it. We felt reverent, the (w)hole task was very holy indeed.

After collecting posts and rails from the sea scouts’ premises, Salwa and Rosie got going on the new hole at the top end. Cue much guffawing at hole related jokes - as well as steady progress with baby spades, the giant mascara wand and pac man on long handles.

At the other end of the fence, Suze, Chris and Divya were going at it hammer and pole to dig the rotten fence post out. The post was wider at the bottom and stuck deep in sticky soil, but they definitely made clay while the sun shined and after a gargantuan effort, be-holed! (de-holed?!), they proudly held it aloft.

There then followed a number of discussions about the physics of putting the fence together, which was made more difficult by the fact that posts and rails had come from different suppliers and did not align perfectly. But time was running out and team GG had been on de-fence for so long by then that Ken suggested wrapping up - he would come back and tackle the next phase in a couple of weeks.

The gang filled in the holes to ensure the new posts were secure, and took the remaining woodwork back to the scouts for safekeeping.

As much as we ‘dug’ the mission, no one was on the fence about going for coffee afterwards, so we headed off to enjoy the sunshine and views at Tide Tables :-)