The summer season at the walled garden is well and truly over now, and even though this was a beautifully warm summery morning our task was very much an autumnal kind of tidy up.

Basically weeding. Clearing up an overgrown grassy area, and pulling up lots of brambles.

All in all a lovely revitalising session at the beautiful space. Come visit some time 😀

It is a bright time for the GoodGymmers. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.

Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Meyrick have established a new secret base on the remote ice world of The George at Bathampton.

The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding the young GoodGymmers - Aaron, Tanya, Emily and Vicky, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space....

That being said, it was wonderfully successful ride on Sunday despite the unsettled weather. Starting at checkpoint 1, on the river opposite Lidl, zero GoodGymmers were picked up but many rebel forces were repelled. Checkpoint two was much the same, no GoodGymmers at this checkpoint but several AT-ATs were disabled before moving on to Checkpoint 3.

Here, at The George in Bathampton, the rest of the GoodGymmers gathered to embark on the rest of the journey. There was one complication to the plan, in that we were planning to meet General Helen at Bathampton Mill at one. However, Lieutent Emily was confident we could still do the Two Tunnels and rendezvous with our erstwhile leader at the appointed time.

X - Wing pilot Vicky suggested we make a detour after the tunnels to speed up our return journey, and with that agreed we had our plan!

It was a wonderful ride, great countryside, the odd puddle and the excitement of cycling high speed through the two tunnels to boot. We did make our engagement on time, and avoided all of those pesky remote probes send by Darth Vader - so the plan was a good one. Next time, Episode VI - The Return of the Cycles.

Bath City Farm is one of our favourite missions without a doubt, with plenty of adventure to be had for all. This Saturday, five eager GoodGymmers headed off to add additional pages to the story of our contribution there. Welcome to newcomers Katrin and Matt, to whom Meyrick warned them that 90% of the time, a GoodGym mission at Bath City Farm involves manure.

We were joined shortly thereafter by Jane, who additional offered similar manure warnings, as did Stephen when he arrived; piling on the manure expectations.

You can imagine our surprise when were were told by our host for the day, Helen, that this occasion was in the 10% of tasks that are non-manure related. I feel there may have been some disappointment in the ranks at this news but Helen did suggest that if wanted manure, she was sure she could find something for us. We demurred.

The task she did have for us was clearing a patch opposite the mini horses and next to the chickens. There was a rather overgrown area that needed to be made more presentable, and cleared of unwanted plants and weeds. I believe the fundamentalist wing of the 'Horse & Chickens Deserve Better Views' had been lobbying the Bath City Farm Parliament for this with clucks and neighs.

There was a lot to do, but we are GOODGYM and we work quick. It was fairly routine with nothing to report, (after all, what happens at Bath City Farm stays at Bath City Farm), but there were some incidents with the Burdock....

We completed the mission, job done. Hopefully this will reduce the clucking and the neighs from those chickens and mini-horses, and allow the ducks to raise their voices, as I know they have a bill to pass...

Our visits to Sydney Gardens have increased in frequency this year, and since it is such a beautiful location we are all the better for it.

Sunday saw 4 dedicate GoodGymmers rock up to help once more clearing the foliage away from the two secret grottos. Now these were created in pre-victorian times - a natural reservoir collecting water from the hill was covered over with a dome, into which two entrances still exist. Their plan is to clear these entrances in order that visitors can gaze excitedly in to the 'dungeons and dragons' style caverns within.

Shout out to GoodGym Bristol as joining Bath stalwarts Cosmo and Meyrick were Bristol Area Activator Melanie and Richard; Richard of course joined us some weeks ago to help paint a pavilion in Batheaston.

Today's job was to clear more foliage, there is still much remaining. Long term, they plan to clear the rubble that has collected around these portals to the underworld but the first task is clearing a safe way to them.

We made quick work, with some excellent assistance when needed from the local pack of volunteers. There is still more to do so expect a return, and I can't wait to see what these look like when the task is completed.

8 Goodgymers spent their evening at one of their more regular haunts dubbed on the website as ‘a Secret Garden’ (in Widcombe). No, it’s not THE Secret Garden, you won’t find Mary Lennox playing there. Rather, it’s an old Baptist Burial Ground looked after by The Bath Preservation Trust, cheery! (It is actually quite lovely).

As a few GoodGymers ran their way to the Garden/Burial Ground, discussions were had around what our tasks today would be, as we had a larger group than normal. Would we or wouldn’t we be removing bind weed and brambles? How do we feel about pulling up bind weed and brambles? Suffice to say, and you won’t be surprised, we did pull up an abundance of bind weed and chopped down many a bramble. Some of us felt sad for said plants, I suppose they’d gone to all that effort to choke the life out of the other plants, and bind weed flowers look pretty. The brambles were even showing off their bounty of blackberries. We mused about uses for bind weed: could we fashion a rope? Did it have medicinal properties? Interestingly the leaves do contain a molecule that can treat hypertension and is also known to be a diuretic, among other things… so not all bad! (Thank you Wikipedia) The flowers are also important for sweat bees! (I’ll let you research those and no it’s not a typo).

But I digress… all GoodGymers assembled we took to the task assigned, with gusto, and as usual we cleared a sizeable space of bind weed and brambles within our allotted hour. Making light work of it if I do say so myself. Richard, Jerr and Ruth even managed to remove a blanket of the stuff; allowing flora and fauna underneath to be free and to grow and prosper, until the bind weed and brambles take hold again, and we will be back in a year clearing the same area! We will be ready!

Another good evening’s work team! Till next month at the not so secret, secret garden.

Wow, this warm weather is really something. And one of the best places to experience it is at the Community Garden in Alice Park.

Only three GoodGymmers were able to make it, others I guess may be on holiday. However, the magnificent three of Cosmo, Aaron and Meyrick were issued with instructions as usual by Kathy.

This time it was to address a problem caused by visiting humans. It would seem that the lure of the apples growing on their trees was too tempting to some and they were being picked. As we all know though, apples are not ripe until later in the year, no matter how luscious they may look on the branch...

To protect against humans, we were asked to cover the apple trees with netting, making sure that it was tied safely to avoid potential trip hazards.

With the how we had, we more or less finished. There was a final section we couldn't finish in time, but it had been complicated by the only remaining netting left being not really fit for this purpose. In order to make it work some form of primitive engineering was required, and we just ran out of time.

Nevertheless, let's hope our efforts have saved the lives of the majority of the apples from the scourge of humankind, and they live to see a more productive life journey.