Our esteemed leader Euclides was unavailable this evening, so Sarah stepped in to lead the group to Lordship Recreation Ground.

Task owner Ximena was also absent, but had given full instructions: we were to spread woodchip around the base of various benches and bald patches around the parkrun and junior parkrun courses.

Equipped with two wheelbarrows, two shovels and a rake, the group made short work of the task, returning to the woodchip pile several times to ensure any potentially muddy patches were well covered.

Meanwhile Dave eschewed the use of tools and developed his own wheelbarrow filling strategy. As Paul said "he's literally the human Swiss Army knife"

As 8pm rolled around the equipment was packed away, Haringey hi 5s were exchanged and our heroes disappeared into the night.

Kudos to Claire for tonight's pun!

6 wonderful Goodgymers kicked off a whole new year of GG action by helping the Friends of the Meadow Orchard go hunting for last season's fallen christmas trees to be converted into hugel beds.

Huge-l News If True

And so it begins. 2025 ushered its new GG Haringey year with the threat of inclement snow but that wasn't going to stop our brave Goodgymmers. Armed with puffa jackets and more layers than we could count, our Goodgymmers ran, cycled, and walked to the task in the West of the borough where the good folk from the Meadow Orchard had pressed the Big Red Button labelled Goodgym: Press For Help and we heeded the call.

It wasn't the promise of hot spiced cider and wassailing that brought our team out, I swear, but it certainly helped as the first dusting of snow began falling during our run. Thankfully, almost as soon as the dusting began it had stopped and the evening ended up being quite mild, if only in comparison to the weather elsewhere in the country.

Our team was guided to a lovely long and wide avenue of fancy houses where we were handed a list with house numbers with trees to collect. We wasted no time in pairing up and before you knew it, our teams were buzzing all over the road picking up huge trees and collecting them on the green at the bottom of the avenue. Once we were satisfied all the trees on the list had been collected, we picked them up and carried them the kilometre or so back to the Meadow Orchard, destined to become hugel beds in the not-so-distant future.

Once at the Orchard, Alan from the Friends group, always a man of his word, proceeded to entertain us with fire-making and hot cider. What a better way to kick off GG 2025.

Super Sarah will be leading the session next week, as we fill up holes at Lordship Rec to ensure the safety of our local parkruns and junior parkruns. Come!

(*) you had to be there

Seven Goodgymmers met on a very cold night to do some digging for Laura at Tottenham Green.

To get us ready for bulb planting we did a warm up of some side step squats and fast feet. The dreaded Sally squats did not make a show but there was squatting none the less. This kept us warm far a little whilst we waited for Laura to arrive.

She needed us to dig a six inch trench for a bulb lasagne. Which this Haringey lot has now renamed planting onions.

With gloves, digging forks and a shovels the team began the hard graft of ploughing the space for the bulbs.

At first the task seemed never ending but before you know it the trench with ready for the bulbs. In true lasagne style it was layered with a line of bulbs, then some, leaves, soil, a different type of bulbs, and a final layer of soil.

After one hour the team had finish the task and were ready to head to warmer territories.

4 Goodgymmers cooked up a storm on a chilly Wednesday night as they helped the Friends of Tottenham Green in preparing a bulb lasagna on the beds by Seven Sisters High Road

On The Edge of Glory

Ingredients

• 1 bucketfuls of narcissuses
• 1 bucketful of crocuses and muscaries
• 1 bucketful of snowdrops, chionodoza and cammassias
• A generous sprinkling of fallen leaves
• 1000s tbs of good topsoil

Method

Get yourself a team of sunny and smiling Goodgymmers to clear a disused flowerbed and prepare it for planting.

Then, using a fork (or a spade) dig a massive trench along the bottom of the bed.

While the bed is being dug, make sure any leftover soil is cleared away from the trench.

Once you're satisfied your trench is deep enough, generously sprinkle a thin layer of fallen leaves for compost and create your first layer of bulbs. Start with your narcissuses for best results. Then cover your bulb layer with a generous helping if topsoil.

Repeat the same process with the crocuses and muscaries, the with your snowdrops, chionodoza and cammassias, and voila - you have made yourself a bulb lasagna.

Now it's time to let Mother Earth cook for about 3 to 4 months.

Yum.

We'll be back at Tottenham Green next week, helping them finish planting all their Spring bulbs - come!

Four Goodgymmers had to turn their back on a night at St Mark's Church after some overzealous Council officers stole their task from them mere minutes away from their arrival.

Theft in cold blood

Raj and Gramps, our running crew for the evening, were just about to set off to task when a bird chirped in Gramps' ear that our task for the evening might have just been cruelly stolen from under us.

Undeterred, our running crew took a detour to the location of the task just to double check and St Mark's Church had never looked cleaner! Turns out that when our assistance was requested to help as the outside of the church had become an ice rink with the frost and fallen leaves, the Council had also taken notice and cleared the mess of their volition. Credit to them, I suppose.

Our Goodgymmers, now joined by Niamh and Veronika, decided to find themselves another job and before you could say 'it's colder than a leaf-sweepers bum out here,' they were at the Noel Park Children's Centre, clearing the courtyard of leaves.

In a task described variously and unironically, as 'the best task ever,' our Goodgymmers swept, laughed, joked, and frolicked to their heart's content before a number of them decided to check notes jump in their car and get back home. It takes all sorts, sometimes, to rescue a win from the jaws of certain defeat. Boom.

Come next week!

5 Goodgymmers proved they weren't afraid of the dark by lending a hand at a very spookily lit Floyde's Garden on a lovely, wet autumn night.

The turning of the worm

The good folk at Floyde's Garden are having some work done, creating a paving area to frame a whole bunch of new natural planting. However, the ground was chockablock with a multitude of very illegal and very aromatic three cornered leeks that needed to be dug up.

Our Goodgymmers brought their own lights as the proper pros they are and were on their knees even before slow ol' Gramps had a chance to do a proper risk assessment. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Conversation on the night included weighing the benefits of wild foraging against the use of fox urine as a cooking ingredient, the likelihood of finding Lord Lucan in one of the many holes we dug up, the futility of life expressed quite dramatically by the unnamed Goodgymmer who attempted to use a rusty paint stripper and a screwdriver in place of a trowel, and one of our regulars spent most of her evening engaged in very one-sided chat with every single worm we dug up. It takes all sorts.

Join Dave and Latoya at Traid next week for more fun and games!