Saturday morning - perfect time for a parkrun goodgym combo! Wanstead flats the meeting point. For some of us the first time parkrunning at Wanstead flats! Great morning for it. One of the few occasions I haven’t seen someone taken down by the muddy section. Good warm up for a couple of Sunday morning half marathon heroes in the group.

Then on to Emmanuel church. Anticipating the big crowds of Sunday morning, the church were keen to get the leaves that had fallen on the paths around the church cleared - avoid some potentially hazardous situations. Initially, we divvied the task, boys to bag the leaves, girls to rake (hence “bag boys for life”) but ultimately everyone was chipping in with everything. We counted up and think it was probably around a squillion leaves that we cleared between us and the other volunteers at the church so all in all, job well done.

Watch out for more Saturday parkrun goodgym combos in the coming weeks as we’re trying to work out when our next instalment is gonna be and we’re definitely thinking this side of Xmas!

Last night saw round 2 of GoodGym Newham's fast flyering for Cody Dock's Frost Fair, coming up on 30th November.

Firstly though, a congratulations to the Princes, Kev and Sharon, respectively our figurative patriarch and matriarch, on their 30th wedding anniversay! And they would have chosen our group run to celebrate it too, had work and illness not gotten in the way. We'll have to save the OJ & Lemonades till next time...

Back to the task - great to have a few more of us this week, which certainly helped with the pretty substantial stack of flyers we were to post through letterboxes to promote the Frost Fair in the local community. Apparently flyering does make a difference to the number of people attending Cody Dock's events, and we even had a special request to go a bit further north of Star Lane, getting the word out to even more folks than we would usually cover. I think we distributed about 700 flyers between the two weeks, so well done everyone!

Just a plug for the event though if anyone is tempted to go (and we've been to past iterations - they are highly recommended) - the Frost Fair is a free community event with craft stalls, outdoor games, live music, fire sculpture, choir singing, food & drink, a free cycle maintenance workshop and other activities. More details on the Cody Dock website

For anyone tempted by gardening and excellent post-task snacks, we're at Emanuel Church this Saturday, and then off to the Adventure Playground next Tues - deets to follow on the WhatsApp.

A pleasantly warm evening for the team of four

A quick catch up at The Print house before we headed down the River Lea to Cody Dock

Hilary had thankfully collected the leaflets earlier in the day as when we arrived the Dock was i darkness and locked up...so a slight detour before we headed towards Star Lane

We decided to stay as one group and managed to post most of the leaflets and gentle walk back to the Print House and decided to deliver a few more leaflets.

Still plenty of streets to let know about the Frost Fair so will be returning towards Star Lane to deliver the last of the flyers.

This week 10 intrepid GoodGymers in Newham returned to Hackney Adventure Playground. For 6 of us meeting at Jim & Tonic, we enjoyed a nice run through the Olympic Park and up the River Lea,

On arrival we found our remaining 4 GoodGymers to complete the team, along with two big tasks ahead of us - a mountain of crushed bark to move, and a forest of weeds to clear. The crushed bark was headed for a play area to help make it safer for the children using it, while the team clearing weeds were on a mission to find out what was underneath - with the hope that there might be a suitable (and flat) area for a future shed. It was clear in no time and the results were promising, once some large logs can be cleared.... watch this space, I sense a future GoodGym mission on the horizon.

We finished just as the drizzle started, perfect timing, and headed back towards Stratford, with a few of the group making a tactical social stop along Here East. Great work everyone, and special mention to Jess who joined us for her first mission - great to have you and we look forward to seeing you back again soon!

Next week we'll potentially have a fitness session as no tasks available currently, but normal service should resume from the week after, with a potential return to Cody Dock on the cards. Keep an eye out for the listings and see you there!

Mr S has problems with his knees and his back garden access is through a steep and narrow staircase. So the garden had not been tended for quite a while. He was very welcoming and was glad to have help.

Initially the job looked simple from afar as you could see only a few pieces of rubbish which needed to be picked up.

However upon closer inspection, there were loads of things hidden under the overgrown weed that needed to be cleared, including one broken toy aeroplane (or potentially a drone?!), two footballs, one basketball, one tennis ball and many other things which I hadn't expected to find in a garden!

There were other things which I would have loved to clear but couldn't do so without additional tools and potentially one other person. Informed Mr S to contact the requesting organisation for further support.

A couple of firsts for GoodGym Newham on our regular Tuesday evening session – a new task in the form of handing out flyers for FoodCycle and a first appearance for Ahmed!

On the latter - Ahmed, it was an absolute pleasure to meet you, we hope you enjoyed it too and can’t wait to see you back again.

FoodCycle, our other first, had been in touch because they’re just about to launch a new location down the road from us in Plaistow. FoodCycle work with volunteers to collect surplus food, turn that into healthy meals that are then served at community meals in various locations around the UK. By doing so they hope to tackle food poverty, loneliness and food waste all in one go, which all sounds like a great thing to be doing! Keen to reach new volunteers in the area, we were armed with a stash of flyers aimed at recruiting said volunteers. So off we went down the Greenway, around the diversion, towards Plaistow station and surrounding streets, where we split the flyers between us and spent the next 20 mins or so distributing them.

Then back to the Print House for the obligatory OJ and lemonade (other drinks are available…) Well done everyone – it may be a task we repeat if FoodCycle would like us to do some more flyering, or if there are other ways we can support.

See you next week – we’re off to the Adventure Playground!