Deep in Walpole Park lies a mulch mountain underneath a thick blanket of fallen leaves. Our job? To dig deep and mine for gold! Or - rather - to dig deep and mine for dark brown mulch, otherwise know as ‘the good stuff’! This nutrient heavy mulch was then to be taken to the kitchen garden to be used as food for the plants there.

First, in the dark and the rain, we climbed the mountain and with spades tossed the leaves aside; Sevan and Kash were first to the top! We hacked at the leaves causing wet (yet also incredibly dusty) avalanches - but we persevered and soon we reached the darkest and tastiest mulch. We filled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow and Steph took charge of taking the mulch to the kitchen garden.

If you didn’t know, mulch mountains contain all sorts of unexpected obstacles- rocks, weird fumes and logs bigger than you or I - no problem for Kash who dug the logs out and launched them aside.

Finding the ‘good mulch’ was quite a challenge as there were so many layers of wet heavy leaves and half cooked mulch and so, when we did - Amy declared it her favourite task ever.

Surprisingly none of us sunk in the pile and needed to be rescued but also - none of us came away with dry shoes!

Do you remember August 2025, when GoodGym cleared a brambly meadow for grazing animals at Horsenden Farm? You may not, as the group's composition has changed a bit since then.

Do you know what happened afterwards? The brambles grew back. But so did our group.

The newest addition was Lara, who had joined GoodGym only the night before. Like many other GoodGymers, she swapped screen time for getting active outdoors, meeting new people and making a positive change. She finally had a chance to rediscover her long-forgotten skills and did a brilliant job, quickly identifying and tackling the most important tasks.

The Saturday morning session started with saying hello to ponies Trixie and Charlie, who were happily grazing in their new paddock. Yes, that's the same paddock GoodGym had cleared in recent months! It's always encouraging to see the results of our work come to fruition.

Next, we made our way to the familiar (at least to a couple of us) meadow, which needed another bramble bash before adding new fencing inside the existing enclosure. The current boundary along the public paths wasn't deep enough to stop enthusiastic visitors from feeding the ponies, so Trixie and Charlie wouldn't be allowed into the new meadow until a new barrier was in place to prevent them from getting used to treats from strangers.

We got into chopping work with loppers and shears, distracted only once by friendly goats Alfie and Yogi, who came over to greet us. We didn't meet the cows on the day, but from looking what's been laying on the ground, we knew they had been to the meadow recently - so we had to watch our steps!

The stubborn bramble patch that had sprung back since last year was much easier to deal with this time, giving us more time to focus on clearing a corridor through the virgin bramble jungle further up the slope. Who knows when that ancient blackberry land was last touched?

"I don't know what we would do without you!" said Elsa, a Friend of Horsenden Farm, when we returned from our chopping quest.

Lastly, it was time for pizza, which sparked conversations about the top-notch ingredients needed for the world's best pizza and 90s martial arts films (hint: one of the Horsenden Loaf pizzas is called Jean Claude).

It was the perfect way to start a cool, misty morning: a good dose of exercise, followed by a well-deserved lunch and a little sunshine in the afternoon!

The details of tonight's top-secret mission for Hobbayne Charity must remain classified to anyone who wasn't there. However, the commander of our very special unit has agreed to answer a few frequently asked questions about a typical GoodGym operation.

How do you get a special forces crew through a small building hosting two council meetings with residents, without being noticed?

Smuggle them through a network of secret corridors.

How do you reduce your greenhouse gas emissions?

Get a couple of GoodGymers to carry away an electricity generator and a canister of diesel, and lend them to a local church.

How do you prepare a charity office for a makeover?

Recruit a team of safe crackers to move the safes out of the painters' way. Or, better, call in GoodGymers to relocate them while keeping all the valuables safely locked inside!

How do you deliver sacks of teddy bears to a social worker supporting children with special needs when you don't know the exact address?

Send in GoodGym Santa and his trusty helper. Santa always finds his way to those who deserve it!

How do you fit long MDF planks into a commercial waste bin?

Call in a GoodGym martial artist to karate-kick them into more manageable pieces.

If you'd like to witness GoodGym's undercover operations first-hand, obviously, we can't tell you where to go. Definitely not to the dark corners of Walpole Park on a Tuesday night (wink, wink).

After Halloween night, when a horde of ghouls had haunted Northfield Allotments, wreaking terror in the hearts of young and grown-ups alike, a five-person Ghostbuster crew returned the following day to solve the allotment scare problem.

First, Jo, Dora and Kash exorcised the demons of drinking by removing the caps from empty wine bottles, releasing any intoxicated ghosts and preparing the glass for recycling. They then moved on to stacking chairs, while Nima and Sevan wheeled the foldable tables away to the event shed. The two later dismantled a gazebo (or was it a marquee?) and packed it away to rest in peace in the shed until the next occasion.

The exorcists then set off with wheelbarrows on a hunt for fluffy spiders, rubber bats and fake pumpkins, all of which needed sorting before being stored in the Halloween shed alongside the plastic skeleton crew.

The final tour around the allotment involved collecting carved pumpkins. After removing the lights from them, they were ready for smashing at the communal compost bin. Dora spotted a couple of small, intact pumpkins and decided to save them from the barbaric ritual. They escaped the smashing, only to end up in a red Thai curry. Yum!