The Friends of Ham Lands welcomed 6 cheery GoodGymers (and Hunter the pooch) on a much brighter and drier Saturday morning than was expected for a second go at the brambles along the pathway we worked on last month.

It’s always great fun to get together with the FoHL and help them with their ongoing efforts to preserve the green spaces of the Ham Lands for the benefit of walkers and local residents. This time, Sharon brought along a couple of boards showing an aerial photo of the area in 1944 and a map from 1841, when the topography of the area was quite different from today.

We were armed with loppers and shears and headed out along the path in twos and threes, cutting back the brambles and gathering them in large canvas sacks, all the while catching up on each other’s news and the events of the moment.

Those brambles can be nasty and the murmur of chat was punctuated by the occasional “ouch” (or a slightly less polite term) as several of us received our scratch of the day, but these didn’t spoil the merry mood as we did our bit for nature to get the weekend off to a good start.

The prospect of a visit to the Swiss Bakery helped our motivation and we soon settled down to excellent (tiny) coffees and delicious flammenkuchen and quiche as reward for our efforts. Guten Appetit!

Next visit to the Ham Lands is on the Easter weekend so we will be updated soon on whether this will affect it. Keep an eye out for changes to the listings!