Bramble New World

You may have heard about the Ealing Summer Festivals hosted each year in Walpole Park. Beer Festival? Jazz Festival? Blues? Comedy? Tonight, the popular park in the heart of the borough was the venue for the alternative Bramble Bash Festival organised by GoodGym Ealing, who luckily just missed the worst rain that evening.

The festoon lights lit up when runners Sevan and Kash finished their loops around Lammas and Walpole Park and met Christos who walked to the task. Penny cycled for her first Walpole Park x GoodGym experience and was happy to learn she could lock her bike in a safe place. Having left Penny's bike as a pawn in the Rickyard's tool store, we borrowed loppers, shears, secateurs, two pairs of extra-thick gloves, a rake, and a trolley.

Even such a refined historic park as Walpole is not 100% bramble-free. In several locations, the thorny stems encroached on the pathways, so Ranger Jon gave us a map showing the bramble sites in need of a GoodGym intervention.

While cutting our way through the bramble jungle, we questioned whether the nettles and thistles needed to be removed too - not because they were equally unpleasant to touch - they were on the way to the brambles. We started discussions about the future of the Earth, where the weeds are left to their own devices, undisturbed by the likes of GoodGymers and Greener Ealing. Our collective imagination painted a dystopian world dominated by brambles and bindweed. We had to prevent that turn of events!

One hour and two fully loaded trolleys later, most of the brambles disappeared and retreated far away from the pedestrian path.

Next week our team of overgrowth shredders is running, walking or cycling towards North Ealing to decimate shrubs at St Andrew's Church and Community Centre. Sign up now to join us!