Two valiant Goodgymmers joined the regular Pymmes Brookers near the top of the brook on Castlewood Road in East Barnet. Emily even cycled all the way from Islington, a steady uphill warm up.

Organiser Eamonn dished out equipment from their extremely well-stocked inventory: waders, wellies, gloves, pickers, hooking forks, loppers, sacks and hoops, trugs... even some spare socks to pad out the boots! After a quick safety briefing and pointing out some of the more notable fly-tipped waste - scooters, bikes, a sofa - we got stuck in.

We filled sacks from the verge with the usual trash: bottles, cans, fast food containers, old bits of plastic. Then, climbing down into the culverts, George found a moped. Others found a shopping trolley, bicycles, a traffic cone, footballs, and mattresses and rusted bed springs overgrown with vines.

Undeterred by the scale of the waste, we gathered what we could piece by piece and sack by sack. Using ropes, a saw, loppers and a bungee, we hacked free the trolley and cleared a path. Then eight of us hauled the moped up through holly and brambles until it was level enough to wheel it onto the grass by the road. By the end, we had three towering piles of rubbish waiting for the council to collect it, which according to Eamonn, was "our biggest haul to date".

A fantastic effort all round, but there's still plenty to do, so more Goodgymmers needed for the next session!