On this lovely, mild spring day, the volunteers split into two. Half of us went to the canal alongside the Riverside Resource Centre. Carly, Rowan, Lance and the two Alans knocked back the lime mortar that had been used during the Bridge 8 renovation week, and gouged out more of the old, loose mortar.

John and Colin cleared muck from the area by the swing bridge. The recent rain had made the towpath almost unwalkable so this task was much needed and will be invaluable to walkers.

Duncan and Mike exposed a length of the original wall. We will soon rebuild it.

We took and early tea, enjoying tasty sponge cake and cookies made by Alan and Jan W, before going to Clydach.

The second set of volunteers were at Coed Gwilym park canoe store where Sue, Christina and Ronnie levelled the leaf mould, weed from the canal and soil across the flower beds, thereby preparing the ground for the dahlias to go in.

A generous gift of a potted mature azalea by a Clydach resident proved to be very reluctant to leave its pot. It took the combined efforts of Chris, Sue, Ronnie, Bob and Martin nearly half an hour to separate plant from pot and a further quarter of an hour to decide how to get it to the hole dug for it. Tying a rope round it and pulling it seemed the best solution but in the end just rolling it along on its side turned out to be the successful method. A second potted azalea donated by the same generous person is in a notorious narrow top and wide bottomed container. Decision on how to extricate pot from plant was a still a subject of debate when tea was taken.

The successful rolling method of taking azalea plant to hole is demonstrated by Chris and Sue. Honestly, Martin was helping but someone had to take the photo!

All the while, Dave doggedly clipped twigs into shorter twigs.

Martin was given special leave of absence after tea at Coed Gwilym Park due to azalea pot stress rolling disorder in order to tidy, weed and seed the Hebron Road Garden. This was done in managed phases and was achieved with no further deterioration in his condition apart from the loss of one wellington boot.

A grand day out indeed! The pleasant weather and two-site working enabled us to make great progress. Some of us finished off the session with a visit to the Buried Lock site where it was lovely to see the recently constructed by-wash taking all of the water with ease and the recently revealed walls of the not so buried lock proving to be in excellent condition.

Funded by The Shared Prosperity Fund that is part of the UK Government’s levelling-up agenda, and is administered by Swansea Council.