On Saturday 1st April 2000 nine of us returned to Saffron Walden but this was no April Fool. We had come to finish off the

millennium challenge and complete the upper part of the garden by laying the path and doing other sundry jobs.
The path laying set off well as the route was marked,

the trenches dug and filled with sand. After that things started to fall apart, literally, as the paving slabs cracked if you looked at them too hard. Robert and Gerry struggled manfully on and had

laid about half of the path by the end of the day.
Stuart Meadows from the YHA showed up to take

some pictures and see what we were doing, in preparation for an article in the YHA Triangle magazine, in the Autumn; not only do we get our pictures in the paper, we also get to appear in a glossy magazine. Stuart also mucked in laying paving slabs

and weeding too.
On Sunday we were nine again, plus Bethany, and Robert again became chief

paving slab layer, this time with Chris. Soon a gender demarcation had occurred; the men doing the paving, the ladies on the herb garden, and polly keeping the local cats at bay.
By late afternoon the path was complete, with us down to our last paving slab, the herb garden was clear with rows of rustic stone dividing the plants which had been split and replanted, and the beds were weeded.
The garden now looks magnificent and is barely recognisable from what we came to

just over a year ago. We have well and truly met the YHA's millennium challenge.
Thanks to everyone who took part over the ten days we worked, to Darren for the plan without which we would have gone nowhere, Roz & Darren for getting the plants, and to Suzanne, and Margaret, the wardens for making us welcome and satisfying our insatiable appetite for tea and sandwiches.