This was our third visit to the Old Baths site on Lodge Lane, with the aim of finishing off clearing all the overgrowth and years of layers and layers of litter from the back wall. The Seeds of Change project are working on a mural for the wall, telling the history of the site, from the original wash house, to the baths many of the older local community remember well.

Sallyann lead a social run with Ruth from Hope street and the rest of us either walked or cycled our way there meeting all together at the site.

It started raining shortly before we arrived, and continued to pour down throughout the evening, so we felt we were somehow connecting to the history of the wash house in getting very very wet!!

The excitement of the evening came in the shape of an old rusted safe we found that had been hidden in the overgrowth for who knows how many year. Try as we did, we could not get it open, but instead ran free with ideas of what might be inside, from gold from the titanic to someones head! We reluctantly left it in the good hands of the Seeds of Change team with a promise of a share of the goodies should they ever get it open.

Using cutters, hand saws and litter pickers we made wet progress in finishing off all but the final stump of the buddleia bush. Elinor (leading the project) had brought a power saw for her to complete it's removal, but given the heavy rain we all thought better of using an electrical equipment on this particular occasion, so we settled for cutting it back as much as possible and, thanks to Pauline and her hand saw, did a sterling job before calling it a day, freezing cold and soaking wet.

We're very much looking forward to seeing the mural take shape over the coming weeks now!