At first we were unsure if all the balsam had already been bashed by another volunteer group as we arrived to piles hung from trunks here, there and everywhere. Once we moved a bit further into the undergrowth we found an abundance of red rooted aliens to pull! Unfortunately they seemed to be surrounded by an impenetrable wall of nettles too so we had to carefully pull around them while also getting pestered by mosquitoes despite a good soaking in bug spray beforehand. It wasn't long before we had made a good dent and were ready to head off. Before that though we had quite the scare pulling a furry thing from the undergrowth that the balsam had grown into. It turned out to be a teddy bear and not a previously alive furry thing fortunately. Giorgio Beverley Hills bear was actually a bit of an antique as came from 1998. Selling for £9.72 on Ebay in mint condition but alas our Giorgio was very much not in mint condition and did in fact have balsam growing out his head and a host of worms and bugs!

A lovely session with Jill and the lovely volunteers at Woolston Station Garden. We even had time to stop for a break. There are always some brambles to weed out and we were dressing the beds thanks to a donation of bark. It is fabulous to see all the bees and pollinators enjoying the amazing flowers growing in the beds.

There were several jobs to choose from the help Ms S access her garden more. I selected clearing the passionfruit flower which had overtaken the greenhouse so you could hardly get in the door. This meant Ms S couldn’t access the tools for her garden easily. It was a tough job as the plant had twisted itself around everything and was between all the glass panes and frame. Some of the plant had been cut so there was also a lot of dead leaves falling off everywhere. It took 2 hours to really make a dent in the greenhouse and clear approximately half leaving a good clear space in the entrance to access. There was still quite a lot of plant at the back of the greenhouse and behind the shelving but unfortunately I ran out of time to get it all out. Hopefully we might be able to do a return visit to finish the task as it was lot for one pair of hands. Ms S was thrilled with the difference it made and even shared some cake with me before I left.

Tonight we were in charge of cleaning and packing away all the things from the Colour Run the day before. We quickly got to work organising a box for resuable items, checking and refilling the "useful" event boxes, and wiping down the tables. Ashleigh upon discovering a wheel had broken on the trolley set out with great determination to fix it. It was no easy feat and she had to call Lucy in as reinforcements. After some work with a hammer, a glue gun and some tape the wheel was back on. Unfortunately it did not pass the "Can you support a whole human" test. So they had to start all over again! I can confirm the wheel is now back on but we wouldn't recommend an heavy loads at the front of the trolley or any bumpy ground!

I started off on car park marshalling while Ashleigh helped on registration for runners and walkers. It wasn’t long before it was time to head to our colour stations ready for the start. I jumped at the chance to be plant station 1 which meant we got to throw paint not once, not twice, but three times as it was two laps and we then moved to the finish arch. Now it took a bit of practise to see how much paint was needed per cup to get the best paint to people ratio. There were definitely some times with too much paint or person! I ended up chief paint police on the finish as we descended into anarchy with children pinching the paint. I had to ration it out to make sure we had enough left for all the finishes. Ashleigh had no such problems though as they chucked all their paint on the first lap. Job done!! We had so much fun and so did the participants. Some of them went for extra laps as they were having so much fun. We can’t wait for this event to come around again. It wasn’t long before it was all over and we were tidying up and trying to get ourselves back to our usual colour!

Steph was assigned to distributing numbers for the 5k while I was in charge of women’s and kids T-shirts. There were more than 1000 runners expected and 300 t-shirts to give out. There was still time to grab our complimentary volunteer burger before we headed out to our marshal positions. They were well needed to sustain our cheering through the 5k and 10k which was two laps. Steph was positioned for her road closure and Ellie ran down to her road closure on the parallel road. Fortunately we didn’t have too many issues with cars trying to come through and lots of residents came out to cheer alongside us. Great to see Abby smashing out a new 5k PB and lots of other runners from local groups enjoying this local race. I didn’t manage to spot everyone but they certainly heard me with my cowbell! We look forward to being back next year.