A lovely couple of hours helping Rachel and all the team set up for the fabulous Toes In The Water festival at St Denys Boat Club. Ashleigh and I got the bunting up first and then provided a lift and shift service for the stall holders and musicians. Back again later for more fun closing down after the rousing music has finished.

We were back to Southampton City Farm to help build up Goat Mountain once again. They have been busy setting up some new enclosures and areas so a lovely pile of compacted earth needed shifting. All of us got stuck in filling up the wheelbarrows helped by Danni from the farm. Chris was perfecting his run up ensuring we got all the earth in the right place. Naturally we had a great workout and a little pilates roll down afterwards to help ease out our backs. There will no doubt be another Goat Mountain session to come.

On a spartan, chilly morning Khadija and I joined the marshalling team for the Southampton Running Festival. A half marathon, 10k, 5k and 2k children's race. Welcome to Khadija on her first Good Gym task and well done as we were outdoors for just over four hours. We were stationed together out on the course and luckily we were sheltered from the biting wind. We thoroughly enjoyed hopping around cheering on all the runners. Great to see so many turn up and run; all ages and speeds. They had around 600 runners and all went well.

I spent a few hours helping the Itchen Navigation Trust at Ham Farm installing a dead hedge along the path. It was hard work sawing the tree limbs, moving and trimming them.

I pinched this explanation from the friends of Itchen Navigation facebook page as it describes what we did today and why.....

Around Ham Farm some of the reed beds and river margins have eroded away and have lost their diversity. The reed bed above Ham bridge was being smothered by bramble and elder, and it was being shaded by the willows, leading to a loss of marginal and submerged vegetation. If left to nature the reed bed would eventually become thick bramble, nettles and willows, this is natural process called succession and it is happening all along the Navigation, but there needs to be a balance. There was also a lot of erosion and compaction in this area from people and dogs.

The 50m of dead hedge we installed today will protect the degraded bank here and promote the re-generation of the reed beds. This will create a more diverse habitat and, consequently protect the tow path from erosion. The removal of a number of willows will let in more light. Protected areas like this are also great places where water vole and other wildlife can live without the constant disturbance of people and dogs, we may even get the swans nesting safely here.

Our charity are doing our best to protect the important marginal vegetation and enhance biodiversity along the Navigation and we couldn’t do it without the help of our wonderful volunteers, there will be another day coming up soon to finish this area.

We were back this evening to carry on clearing the planter in the local residential area to help the elderly residents. We cleared alot of brambles and raked back lots of waste. The planter is now nearly ready for digging and shovelling before it can then be replanted The local residents were very pleased and one lady stopped by to thank us which was lovely. We look forward to returning soon

Chris ellie and myself met for a small wander and litter pick before heading on to the main session clearing planter. We started at sainsburys and did a small loop around the local area venturing down the alley we have adopted for litter picking which seems to be improving on each visit. We cleared two bags of rubbish and had some great chats! We even made a kitty fwend!