A beautiful day saw 7 of us help out a the lovely family fun day at Roots4Life today. Justine, Johnny, Sarah, Ashton and myself helped in the first shift, Justine and Ashton manning the smoothy bike (a great hit with kids and grown ups alike!), Johnny and Sarah on the bouncy castle, me on the raffle stall and as if it was all perfectly planned, Khai and Sarah arrived to take over after their respective tasks of building a train set and litter picking in the morning! You've gotta give extra kudos to the double deeders any day!

Great to see you all and thank you for helping the event go smoothly! The session next week at Roots has been cancelled but we'll be back to help with their growing day on the 7th June!

Until next time 🥰

We joined the Friends of Lesnes Abbey and Woods for their monthly conservation session.

The group's work each month is guided by the parks manager who this time had asked us to clear litter at the far side of the woods, before heading to The Heath to work on restoring the natural vegetation there.

So we loaded litter pickers, bin bags and loppers into two wheelbarrows and headed off to the litter troublespot. If you have been to Lesnes Abbey Woods you'll know there are some very steep climbs, and pushing the wheelbarrows up them was a good workout! We were rewarded with glorious patches of bluebells all around.

When we got to the appointed spot the cow parsley was so tall that despite our best efforts we struggled to find any rubbish 👀. Most likely a job for another day when the plants have died back.

We made our way through the woods - litterpicking as we went, and loads more bluebells en route - to The Heath where we set about cutting back holly, bracken and other plants to let the heather thrive. It was lovely getting busy in the sunshine.

We'll be back again next month. Perhaps we'll see you there?

We joined the hi-viz team at Lesnes Abbey Woods parkrun to marshal and cheer the junior runners and scan their finishing tokens.

The some of the runners had decorated the starting line with chalk messages of 'You are amazing' and 'May the 4th Be With You' to spur everyone on.

The smiling children and parents are a great motivation to get up and out on a Sunday morning. Why not give it a go?