Six of us met at Mud Dock this morning to run to Eastwood Farm to help Derek and Ralph from Friends of Eastwood Farm to pull their balsam out. The invasive weed bursts into flower in a few weeks and we needed to remove it before the seeds spread further.

Once we had tackled a hot 5km of hills, dodging Spring Festival traffic and with a couple of detours for good luck (Shona Sat Nav in rusty working order this morning), we met Fi, Darren, Richard and Ellie who were already getting to work.

We spent a lovely hour doing the therapeutic balsam clearing (with some intertwined less-therapeutic bramble and nettle removing) and discussing whether this was in fact the Kleenex balsam (it's not). In this time we managed to get rid of several metres squared of the balsam and our slave-owners kindly (but unwillingly) let us away to go to our next task.

I for one have found my new favourite hobby (and Fi took her new found skills out on the road on the start of our run back) so we are looking forward to more balsam next year!

A brand new location today - and a long old run to get there too. An 11 km round trip in the hot sun saw the group thin out a bit on the final couple of hills, but we all got to our meet point at Eastwood Farm safe and sound in the end.

As the name suggests, the site was originally a farm but our host Ralph explained that the area had been re-purposed as landfill site in the 70s. This means that it is no longer suitable for building and has subsequently been designated as a local nature reserve.

Our task today was to remove invasive Himalayan Balsam from a small meadow area. This meant getting in amongst a few brambles and nettles so there were a few spare tops and long trousers donned in spite of the heat. The one good thing about Balsam though - as we've learned before, is that it is very easy to pull it out of the soil so pretty soon we had two sizeable piles and a much clearer patch of meadow.

It just remained for a 5.5 km return trip back to base but while half of us set off on our return leg the other half decided that the prospect of wild swimming at Beeses Team Rooms was too good an opportunity to pass up!

Special thanks to Maria for offering to be my back-up today in case I got called and for doing such a great job of back marking everyone over such a long run