As the crowds descended on Glasto and the musical giants took to their respective stages, the GoodGym faithful headed back to the Pembury Estate where there was a new delivery of soil - or Earth(a) - to shift, as Van Morrison might say, 'from the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road'.

Joining the merry band of GoodGymers for the first time was Aida and 'Associate GoodGymmer', Tom, recruited by former band-member Louise - currently on tour and sadly unable to be with us today. Orchestrator, Anne, was also on hand along with regular collaborators Maria and her daughter from the estate.

The group put in a solid 2 hour performance, building a great rap-port with their appreciative audience, and showing unwaivering dedication to hothouse plants and flowers waiting to 'move on up' to the planters. Their gig finished with a single encore - filling barrows one final time to get the next planter started. Far from being one-hit wonders, these GoodGoodNotBadGymers are Megastars and will be filling arenas - or at least planters - again very soon.

Three GoodGym volunteers were out with members of the Stoke Newington User Group to water the young trees on Stoke Newington Common. It was great to have Rosie joining us all the way from Cardiff, and to have Bianca join us for the first time too.

This week, the group adopted a new strategy, supplementing the regular water trolley of contrainers with as many watering cans as volunteers could get their hands on. This allowed the Watering-Can Crew to get started watering the saplings nearest the water source, while the Trolley Team wheeled their canisters to the further flung trees.

The two watering teams converged and joined forces to finish the job in record time.

What a glorious day for a junior parkrun. We were blessed not only with amazing weather but also some great Good Gym volunteers, big shout out to Maria and Moses especially for their first visits to LF junior parkrun, and Nicholas a superb tail walker . Of course, the whole thing can only happen through the efforts of volunteers and DoE participants Daisy, Joel, and Zach are now old hands – whilst super parents Johnny, Melanie, Neil, and Ben made sure we could get underway.
With the 32 runners assembled we welcomed Angiolina, Ines, and Max to their first parkruns, and Sydney’s first at London Fields. We also congratulated Khian on completing his Marathon! it was wonderful to see Paula, who was instrumental in founding the local parkrun and served as RD for many years, returned to provide support. Maya assisted with the warmup before the run began. Herbie achieved a personal best time, leading the group. There were five personal bests in total that morning. As the main group finished, they were met with applause from parents and early finishers. The volunteer crew made quick work of the pack up and it was all over for another week.

Volunteering at Hackney Night Shelter

It was great and it felt good to connect with my community and find out about all the work SNUG does! Looking forward to help out in future activities!

Volunteered at Hackney Night Shelter