On a gloomy November Saturday afternoon, Sevan and Kash were like the Spanish Inquisition - no one expected them. Miss T was their second beneficiary on the day, who was surprised that they showed up at a time when sensible people would wrap in a blanket at home and warm their hands with a cup of tea.

The soggy GoodGymers declared they’d work rain or shine and took off their muddy running shoes to get to the back garden without spoiling Miss T’s clean carpet. Moved by their determination, Miss T offered Kash a pair of dry socks, to which Kash politely said no, as it wouldn’t solve the problem of the drenched trainers. She didn’t decline the offer of black coffee, though.

The task was to weed the garden as much as possible and empty all the plant pots before the day got dark. Sevan, who felt a surge of energy, decided to dig weeds from the beds with a fork. The soil was soft as it started raining when the GoodGymers ran to Wembley from their previous mission in Northolt. It was strangely comforting to be in the rain instead of the wind.

I actually don’t feel miserable now - Sevan

Kash worked on the pots, removing old plants from them. When Miss T emerged from the house to ask whether they needed anything, the GoodGymers asked her whether to keep the soil in the plant pots. According to Miss T, the soil was of poor quality, and there was no point keeping it in the pots. That was the tipping point of the mission, after which both Sevan and Kash started tipping the pots, radically changing the landscape of the garden. It just got dark when the last pot was emptied.

All that was left was to take the garden waste out, rinse muddy hands, enjoy a drink from Miss T, pet her lovely ginger cat, and find the least miserable way back home.

"Chef's choice!" declared Mr C's daughter cheerily when asked where the priorities were in tidying up her dad's garden. Neither she nor her dad were able to look after it, so the flowerbeds were filled with weeds and weeds were also coming through between the slabs. Kash and Sevan looked at how they could get the best outcome for Mr C, a Hobson's choice of weeding the left flowerbed or the right flowerbed.

Kash and Sevan flipped an imaginary coin and chose their patch. Before they started digging, Mr C's daughter offered them biscuits, cake, hot chocolate or cocoa. The hot chocolate (Kash) and biscuits (Sevan) were very tempting on a miserably wet day in London, but they'd just had lunch. The pair got digging, with Kash first finding a fork with 3 tines, then Sevan's unearthed one with a twisted handle to help them with their weeding.

There was lots of lovely, sticky clay soil to dig through and a lot of it ended up attached to the GoodGymers' shoes. Still, the 1¾ forks got the weeds out with their roots, leaving Mr C a nice clear stretch of soil - maybe for some new plants - and 3 bags of garden waste.

When they wrapped up, Kash and Sevan needed to rush to their next mission, leaving Mr C's daughter a little disappointed that they didn't have time for any treats. Sevan said maybe next time, so Mr C's daughter promised to have the biscuits ready when they arrive.

“Seek, and ye shall find”, says a quote from the Bible - but it doesn’t specify whether the sought and the found are necessarily the same thing. The November Grove Farm conservation day was all about searching and discovering. Mike treated us today to a unique quest, equipped with a treasure map from an unlikely source: Thames Water. More precisely, the map wasn’t really a map, but a clue: “that amuse adults”.

On the way to the presumed treasure location, we followed a golden, shiny trail, distracted by the lustre of beer cans scattered along the path. We diligently collected the spoils, packed them in a bag, and cunningly hid our riches inside a rubbish bin. Next to the bin, we made an amusing discovery: a couple of pieces of illustrated literature for the enthusiasts of bottom-heavy ladies. Was that what amuses adults?

Five GoodGymers and three Friends of Grove Farm pressed on, venturing off the path into the wilderness, where Mike stopped and revealed what sort of treasures we were after. The treasure had been buried on the grounds of Grove Farm a century ago, under a manhole owned by Thames Water. But the riches it contained were not of a material kind - that would have been, of course, rather desirable, as we could have funded Friends of Grove Farm efforts to maintain the nature reserve. However, there was more at stake. The beautiful wood anemone patch up the hill was threatened by an underground water blockage, which only Thames Water could fix. But first, we had to find the manhole and clear the access.

After three people pointed out that it would have been great to have a metal detector, we accepted the reality (in which there was no metal detector) and got stuck into hacking the brambles and branches, raking cuttings and leaves, and poking the ground with a fork or a spade. After a few false alarms, resulting in digging out bricks, pipes, pots, and tyres, we tightened our search area to more accurately match the what3words phrase “what.amuses.adults” - to no avail. One of us came up with a hypothesis that a tree with many stems growing in the middle of the patch we scoured might have easily grown right from the manhole within the hundred years - an idea we feared to accept.

It would have been a privilege to report to my dear readers that the mission ended with great success. Alas, we haven’t found the manhole. All we discovered was rubbish hiding in the undergrowth. That had to suffice for a treasure at the end of a worthy quest. We will continue our search in December, so wrap yourself warmly, Dear Explorers, and let us know if you want to put your name down for another adventure here!