Wed 15th April 2015 - West Wight Sports Centre, Freshwater.

Sue's Photographs.

The overgrown frontal areas.

Where do we start...????

Working on the flower (weed?) bed.

A traffic island gets the GG workout..!

One job completed.

Work is well underway.

The "runways" after clearance.

The front beds after a weeding and "haircut".

Carrie's Photographs.

Before (above) and After (below).

Before (above) and After (below).

And a couple of "work in progress" shots.

It has been some time since Green Gym visited this venue and the gardens around the centre certainly reflected this...! Perhaps the kindest description would be to say that they were "overgrown" with most of the planting we had done in the past being in desperate need of pruning. Such was the scope of the task, we deployed GGmers all around the periphery of the building and got "stuck-in". All work areas were carefully inspected to ensure that we would not be disturbing any nesting birds. As with all these sort of jobs, it is easy to cut things down but the difficult bit is transporting all the cut material to its final resting place. Apparently the sporty types use the walkways for circuit training so we were instructed to cut everything back HARD, leaving them a clear track to run around. Other GGmers tackled the flower beds to the front of the building and prepared a raised flower bed for planting up..... wow, we were busy! With a clear blue sky and the temperature up in the low 20's it was a very pleasant session indeed. Everyone was more than ready for our tea break - many thanks to the centre's catering staff who supplied us with tea and biscuits. Mark made a presentation to our outgoing treasurer and thanked him for his many years of excellent service. On completion of the work, there was a buffet lunch organised for those staying on for the AGM.

As we approach the General Election, I have thought of something you can ask the canvassers when they bang on your door. We are told that we should all be doing volunteering under the "banner" of The Big Society - something that many of us have already been doing for years. The question to ask them is "Why, when we give up our time and pay our own transport costs, do we have to pay car parking charges at the venue we are working at?"  We used to visit this venue and were given a council exemption for parking fees during the time we were working there, we now have to fork out £3:40 for that privilege. Surely volunteers should get a free pass, is it too much to ask for? Just a thought.....

The photographs this week were courtesy of Sue and Carrie, many thanks to both!