Last Saturday, a window of gorgeous sunny weather gifted us with an amazing landscape view on Brighton Sea from the top of SheepCote Valley! Not surprisingly, this attracted a reasonable group of enthusiastic volunteers and four GoodGymers, including new member Olivia, Lucia and Hannah to help parkranger Lindsay with the conservation of East Brighton citypark. Lindsay’s engaging enthusiasm is contagious, and we always have a great deal of fun altogether!

Who cleared brambles, who cut overgrown branches, who piled up green waste, who burned those collated twigs, woods, branches, and dry leaves by keeping fires well controlled …. And who, like me 😊, had a first time to unstrap overgrown bramble’s (almost tree) roots by using a tree hoper – new garden tool! Exiting.

After running the parkrun, I felt all the effects of such a green workout, but it was well worth it. I also found out that in Autumn those nasty hedgerow brambles produce berries that can be harvested to produce a good taste gin!

A sunny Saturday mission with GoodGym joining volunteers from Sussex Wildlife Trust, Friends of Sheepcote Valley and Friends of East Brighton Park. A big task force to help make a big dent in a big tangle of brambles. Equipped with gloves and loppers, we chopped away at several years of tangled growth, slowly clearing the perimeter of the wildlife pond that the trust established 8 years ago to encourage a range of critters to use this already beautiful and biodiverse site. Interesting fact: Sheepcote Valley was used for the dumping of municipal waste until the 1980s, when it was landscaped and remediated for use as park space and playing fields.

Did you know that the Brighton & hove park ranger Lansley is promoting Negative Carbon practices in the conservation of East Brighton Park?

After East Brighton parkrun, we joined the Friends of Sheepcote Valley and East Brighton Park for a community mission to clear some overgrown paths and build steps. At our last visit here, we removed hawthorn and blackthorn that were taking over the grassland. For this natural-engineering conservation mission, we brought those recovered blackthorn to new life by using them in building new steps for the park paths!

New members Kitty and Gavin brave their first and “hot” GoodGym session by clearing the park paths from overgrown grass together with Stefania, Richard and our enthusiastic Nancy, who was parkrun director this Saturday.

The view from up there in amazing! The next Friends of Sheepcote Valley and East Brighton Park volunteering meet up is already scheduled on the 22nd of July – Anyone?

Blown along by 40 mph winds, we worked with the Friends of East Brighton Park and the Tidy Up Team to fill 40 bags with litter. We foraged like Wombles in the wooded bits of the park gathering rubbish, much of which had clearly been there so long it was pickled. We found old socks, lighters, vapes, inhalers, coloured plastic beads, an icing set and glasses as well as the usual bottles, cans, sweet and fast food wrappers. We treated ourselves to tea, cake and Marilyn’s wonderful pea and potato samosa’s from East Brighton Cafe afterwards.

After East Brighton parkrun, we joined the Friends of Sheepcote Valley and East Brighton Park to clear more scrub. It looks brutal but the hawthorn and blackthorn has taken over and we want to return the Valley to chalk grassland where sheep can graze. A few weeks ago, we chopped lots of it down and today, it was time to 'pop' some more at the roots, chop the branches into smaller pieces and burn it out of existence! After three hours, including a quick break for tea and chocolate chip muffins, we'd built a bonfire to be proud of and it was time to burn, baby burn!

After bagging a 5k parkrun at East Brighton Park, the Good Gym team took to the hills to help clear scrub.

What is scrub and why do we need to clear it? The scrub clearance we did today helped reduce the blackthorn and hawthorn that has taken over the area. The aim is to return the Valley to chalk grassland where sheep can graze. In turn the sheep’s habit of dunging during the night ensures a net flow of nutrients off the grassland. This produces a very rich plant life, where no one species can become dominant. There may be as many as 40 species found in a square metre, some very rare. The various species of blue butterflies and many other invertebrates are dependent on these communities of plants.

Before we got started, Lindsay the Park Ranger took us through a quick health and safety session where we learnt how to use all the tools, including the mysterious 'tree popper'. The tree popper is a large hand tool that you use to get right under the tree root to remove the whole bush by the roots. That stops re-growth and means, less work next time we come up here (save the date - Saturday February 18th)

Good Gymers sawed, tree popped and piled up a mass of scrub that will be made into a bonfire once it's dried out a bit.

Two hours later and warmed by the 5k run, brilliant sunshine, hard work and great company, we headed back down the Valley and home.