Seven Ealing GoodGymers ditched the Sunday morning lie-in routine to assemble in front of Greenford Park Community Hall for another session to improve the centre's back garden. The backyard used to be a storage space for the London Bike Hub, and when GoodGym visited for the first time, it was full of bicycles in various states: from fine rides needing just a bit of maintenance to wretched-looking frames that hadn't seen their wheels for ages. Over the past few sessions, GoodGymers greatly reduced the number of bicycles in the space, but bike-shifting was still on today's task agenda!

GoodGymers Sevan, Kash and Mira ran to the sessions while the others walked. Did I just mention Mira? She's our newest addition to the team, with a knack for DIY! Our sessions never require experience in any particular area, but we wouldn't say no to bringing practical skills - especially since today's task called for painting.

While Diana, Gaby and Mohamed followed John, the task owner from GPRA, to carry, drive, drag or wheelbarrow old bikes to store them at John's allotment space, the remaining GoodGymers stayed with GPRA members Emma and Heather to further clear the backyard and make enough room to paint old wooden benches. Not seeing the bike squad returning for a while, Sevan set off for a rescue mission.

Mira, Michelle and Kash swept and packed the dried garden waste that had not fit in the green bin last month. One of the benches was now within reach! With no paper nor time to do sanding, Michelle diligently wiped the wood with a cloth and was excited to paint a bench for the first time! Mira gave Michelle some pro tips before both dipped the brushes in the bucket of paint, which, despite all the stirring, felt quite gooey.

When the bike shifters team, eventually joined by Sevan and later Kash, returned from their expedition to the allotment, Mira and Michelle said they must have put about ten coats of paint. Although the paint available to the GoodGymers was quite old, the bench received a much fresher look and more protection from the elements. The yard looked tidier with fewer bikes and without plies of leaves and ivy.

We will be back soon at the GPRA Community Hall to continue with the transformation. Check out how the back garden looked when we started work on that side of the hall and see the difference our sessions made!

Ealing was lucky this weekend to enjoy the blue sky and soak under the shy sunshine of early Spring. After a busy Saturday, Sunday brought our GoodGymers another outdoor task, so great weather was appreciated by everyone. Continuing yesterday's trend, we had another visitor from GoodGym Hounslow: Kymm. Ealing was represented by the usual suspects: Sevan, Steph Ducat and Kash.

John and Heather from GPRA welcomed us with tea and led us to the area at the back, which - even after our last task in December - still looked more like a bike graveyard than a garden. John wanted to challenge the status quo and proposed a plan of action to further clear the space off bikes. The spare wheels were to be slotted in between the old fence and the sturdy fence erected by the council. The interesting fact about the fence predating the council one was that the holes in it were taking almost as much space as the remaining wire!

While Steph and Sevan were assembling bike wheels into an art installation, Kymm spotted something blinking under the leaves on the paving.

- Is this a firefly?
- Do we have fireflies in London?
- I don't know!

The flashing object turned out to be a bike light - not as much a surprise as a firefly would have been!

The bikes occupying the space were not the only things the garden would have been better without. The GoodGymers scooped the copious amounts of leaves, creatively using a bin cover as a dustpan. When the green wheelie bin was full to the brim, the teammates took turns to jump or dance on the top to compress the contents*.

Despite all the efforts put into the wild hopping, the wheelie bin was not bottomless, so Heather went to fetch her green bin along with the cutting tools for GoodGymers to deal with the spiky branches found between the bikes. New equipment inspired our team to cut down the ivy, which in counter-offense threw some pollen into our eyes!

We finished when Heather's wheelie bin was full and all the bikes were stacked on one side. The next step might be disassembling one of the bike racks or maybe painting the garden benches. Watch this space for another session at the GPRA Hall!

* No wheelie bins were injured during this GoodGym session

The very first community mission of December promised Ealing GoodGymers a shower of activities full of Christmas spirit. Everyone was looking forward to festive tasks such as giving the GPRA Hall a fresh layer of paint and upcycling old bikes into decorative reindeer. In practice, the season brought us a different kind of shower, and we started the session by hiding from the rain in the community centre.

John welcomed us with tea and coffee and proposed an alternative task, supporting the neighbouring London Bike Hub, a not-for-profit workshop with a vision of embedding cycling into the community, a place where people can donate old bicycles, buy a refurbished bike, learn maintenance skills and attend classes on how to ride safely. Together with John and Winston from the Bike Hub, our GoodGymers were about to declutter the space behind the GPRA Hall and help transport the donated bikes to store safely in John's backyard.

Mohamed, Sevan, Kash and two GoodGymers who had joined us before at Pear Tree Park (including a new joiner, Maria) formed a human chain in a narrow space next to the hall - luckily, covered from the rain! We started moving the cycles from the backyard to the space in the front of the community centre: from surprisingly heavy kiddies rides, through ultra-light road bicycles, to large Dutch bikes.

When the shower turned into a lighter drizzle, it was time to transport the bikes up the road towards John's place to store them. The larger cycles that didn't have flat tyres (but still had wheels!) could be wheeled along the road. Mohamed even gave a try riding one of them, pulling the second one by his side. One of the GoodGymers stayed by the hall and played Tetris, putting the bicycles on a trailer for Winston to haul uphill. We did as much as we could to quickly clear the space in front of the community centre as guests who rented the hall for their events started arriving.

We didn't get to build any steampunk-looking reindeer today, but the results of the clear-out were very satisfying. When it was time to leave, some bikes were still in the GPRA Hall's front garden. Winston was confident he would sort them out, and John thought that if some kid's bicycles disappeared, the new owner would do them a favour as too many children's bikes were donated to store and distribute them.

We are already looking forward to visiting the GPRA and London Bike Hub in the New Year!

The history of today's task dates back to the 1st of September this year when Kash and Sevan met John from Greenford Park Residents Association at Brentford Festival. John introduced them to his organisation and mentioned their hall that could use a facelift.

On a Sunday morning, a decent-sized group of GoodGymers: Kash, Lauren, Louis, Sevan and Steph, met the GPRA team: Emma, John and Winston at the community hall. Emma told us about the history of the association, which was founded in 1919 and later acquired the space to build the hall in the 1950s. The place was also home to the London Bike Hub and concealed numerous bicycles in either one or multiple pieces.

The GPRA building looked quite unassuming, hidden away from the main road and obscured by an overgrown hedge. According to John, many residents didn't even realise the hall's existence. It was time to change that and make the centre stand out! Forget spring clean-up - GoodGym does the clean-ups all year round!

The 90-minute task included feats of strength, skill and persistence:

• rehoming a large filing cabinet
• smuggling garden waste up the road in a recycling bin
• scavenging old wood to collect material for a bonfire
• a radical haircut given to a hedge to reveal the entrance to the hall
• a serious tidy-up of a rainwater drainage system
• carrying heavy iron fence parts uphill by a team of three
• carrying heavy iron fence parts uphill by a team of one - guess who!

By the end of the session, the GoodGymers made a visible impact - a bit more than just being in the way of today's guests to the morning event at the hall! The front of the GPRA Hall looked much tidier than before, and numerous heavy items no longer needed inside the centre disappeared. John alluded to the future sessions for GPRA closer to Christmas time to make the hall entrance more extravagant - watch this space!