In the middle of a heatwave and after a warm dry spring, the fruit trees of the Wigmore Park Community Orchard were at risk of suffering from drought so we tied up our running shoes and headed out on a hydration mission.

Taking it easy in the heat we ran in the shade for the 5km to get to the park and joined others who had made their directly to the park on foot/bike to reduce the risk of the heat.

Konni was ready and waiting for us in the orchard, with two hoses running to fill buckets and watering cans. We soon had a shuttle system going to get water out to each one of the 80 trees in the orchard and worked systematically to make sure they all good a good bucket or two of water each.

On completion we enjoyed some of Konni's home made elderflower drink and took a moment to celebrate Duncan's birthday with a round of donuts. 🍩 😋

Then the return 5km for the runners thankfully downhill and noticeably cooler as the sun dipped down.

This week's Group Run took us to Wardown Park to fill up barrows of woodchip for mulching trees.

Sounds easy, but we needed to move those barrows over the hill of Pope's Meadow to deliver the mulch to the People's Park orchard. It's a steep hill so with three people pushing the XL barrows it was still a hard job maintaining momentum and pushing on to the top of the hill!

We met Konni from the Luton Orchard's Project who was delighted to see us and have this mulch delivered ready for her volunteers on Friday to distribute around the trees.

With empty barrows it was once more over the hill for us to return them and then before heading back to town we stopped off for a plank challenge and to try out a plank-based lights-out game for a bit of fun core-toning activity.

Weeks of drought are not ideal for recently planted trees and Konni from the Luton Orchards Project has been looking after lots of newly planted fruit trees at various spots around town.

So, when we got a call from Konni about helping to water 70 trees in Wigmore Park's Covid memorial orchard we jumped at the chance to add this worthy task to our schedule.

We started in the town centre and welcomed Esther to her first ever session and had a warm-up. Then we began the 4.5km up-hill to the airport and then to on to the park where Konni waited for us with hose-pipe and watering cans at the ready.

On arrival we set up a watering relay system to make sure every tree got two cans of water, marking the trees with pegs to mark them as done.

We marked a couple of milestones at this session, it was our 200th group run, and Gill brought cupcakes to celebrate recently achieving 500 good deeds! We had a quick celebration with the cupcakes and some Luton apple juice provided by Konni before we bid her farewell and ran back off into the sunset!

It was a lovely, sunny day for a walk up to Farley Hill, which is not quite a hill but rather a roundabout with three interesting looking trees. Sadly mission was not very fruitful. They didn't look like fruit trees but I did take a few photos (just incase I was wrong) before heading back home. Thankfully the sun was still shining and all was still peachy 🌞