Everton park is on a site that used to be high rise social housing and jn the 1970s and 80s that was demolished and a beautiful park was created, a stunning green space with activity areas for locals to enjoy. It is widely known in Liverpool for having one of the best views of the city. Friends of Everton Park maintain the large park and attend to the community gardens. John is our main point of contact and he was the brains behind their new initiative, an Everton Park games. He told us that his inspiration for the games was going to Scotland and seeing the Highland Games that are enjoyed by local communities there. They have assault courses where competitors toss hay bails and build fences. A relay race filled with challenging activities. So this is what John set about creating. A space on the hill was allocated and John got a track painted onto the grass.

The course included passing through hoops, running backwards with heavy bags, rolling a large tube up the hill, constructing a jigsaw puzzle, looping rope onto cones, manoeuvring a wheelbarrow through a line of poles and finally throwing the heavy bag into a hoop.

Unfortunately no one had signed up to this first event but that was ok, in fact it was a perfect opportunity to test run the event and iron out any problems before holding the event again at a later date. After the intense heat some rainfall was welcome, Sallyann, Heetu, myself, Vikky, Aatefa and Nasser all pitched in to help set up and dismantle the course. We then ran the course with varying levels of success! It was incredibly fun with just a few teething issues that we discussed with John and the other volunteers at the end so that the next event could be a success.

The course created some fun inter-generational discussion with the older volunteers comparing the course to the hit 80s phenomenon ‘It’s a Knockout’ and slightly younger volunteers referencing 90s show ‘The Krypton Factor’ still both vintage references, clearly this format needs a reboot for the 21st century! Thanks John and everyone for a really fun day.

Sophie, Vikky and Aatefa ran to Princes park from Hope Street when the temperature was still very warm. Laura, Steph and I were with Ali, a Friend of Princes Park helping him get the wheelbarrows, watering cans and the water butt on wheels out of the lock up. Katy from Friends of Princes Park gave us some instruction on what we were going to do today; water some of the trees that were earmarked for watering in the park. Apparently a new tree, up to two years old, needs a minute of watering every few days as it has not yet developed a deep root system that can access lower ground water. Dina and Ellie joined us before we started wheeling our water collectors down to the lakeside. There we formed a human chain, passing watering cans along to fill up the water butt and the cans, it was a workout! Some twisting and lifting. Then we made our way to the new trees that needed watering. They were each labelled and we marked each label as we watered so that we knew which ones had been done. Liam, Tsitsi and Craig joined the group just in time to see the Cinnabar moth caterpillar on a piece of grass. It was black and yellow striped, the nature signal for ‘don’t eat me, I am dangerous’ but there was nothing dangerous about this caterpillar except that they were munching all the leaves on our baby trees. We watered plum trees, cherry trees, oaks and horse chestnut trees. Ali asked us to water a few extras that weren’t marked just because he liked them which was very sweet and a sign of how much he cares for the park, developing fondness for the trees. I eyed up a fantastic blackberry picking location that I will definitely be returning to in a week or so when the berries have ripened so I can forage a few to have in my porridge. We definitely got our lifting exercise in on this task and really enjoyed the beauty of the park on this warm sunny evening. Katy told us about the Friends of Princes park anniversary event that is happening in a few weeks so many of us agreed that we would love to return for that.