Are you sitting comfortably? Well then I’ll begin.

A long time ago, there was an allotment in Abbey Hey that fell into disrepair.  It once grew crops aplenty but now all it grew was a fine collection of rubbish and brambles.  It looked like this:

A very committed group of allotment society people then decided to try and sort this mess out.  They chopped down the brambles:

But all they were left with was a pile of rubbish and some rather nasty looking invasive plants:

They called in a digger:

Which did a great amount of clearing:

They then decided to put membrane and gravel down to stop the brambles from appearing:

And then rented it out to some keen but very inexperienced wannabe allotmenters, who have been down almost every weekend since and made it into this:

And they have now started growing all sorts of interesting looking things like purple sprouting broccoli:

And they lived happily ever after enjoying long, warm but occasionally rainy summers and growing more food than they could possibly fit in their tiny freezer and were never bothered by slugs or pigeons.*

*Maybe.