Battleweed Common

This evening was our second week battling Himalayan Balsam, which threatens native biodiversity if left to flower and explode it's seeds all over the place. Last week we were at Ockwells Park but this week we headed to Battlemead Common.

There were very few GoodGymers signed up when I checked earlier in the day, and the rain was hammering down, so I was pleasantly surprised when there was a flurry of last minute sign ups and the weather turned pleasant.

We had a lovely, leafy walk along the Thames Path to the what 3 words location shared by task owner Ranger Tom: gently.cotton.chair. Kudos to Gillian for running loops around the rest of us while we walked.

Scarlett and Matthew chose to make their own way to the task and their scenic route took a bit longer than ours. We concluded that it's better to follow TomTom than Mattnav.

The task location was a peaceful spot filled with nettles and Himalayan Balsam. You would be forgiven for thinking the evil plant here was the nettles, and we did get quite a few stings, but the pretty balsam was our target.

Balsam doesn't directly hurt, even if you bash each other over the head with it. Nicola and Matthew can confirm that it is in fact quite a pleasing thing to do, creating a nice hollow sound...

Thankfully balsam is easy to pull up. It's little pink roots mostly come up with a satisfying pop. We were instructed to pull them up and discard them at our feet, so it was easy to work our way along, leaving the right kind of destruction in our wake.

It was difficult to drag everyone away from this satisfying and addictive task, but we had another lovely walk along the tow path back to our start location and I'm sure we'll be back for more soon. Watch this space!