Mid-August Tuesday night group run to Acton’s Wildflower Trail was a sequel to a similar session in July. Another heatwave prompted Romina from horticultural charity Cultivate London to deploy the GoodGymers for another treasure hunt involving finding hand tools and watering cans - with a twist! This time, the task was extended to sowing wildflower seeds. What would the seed mix look like? How would the GoodGymers sow them?

Kash cheated the system by walking straight to South Acton early and unintentionally catching Romina before she left the Cultivate HQ. Kash received instructions directly from Romina and even remembered some of the plants from the seed mix: hollyhock, calendula, poppy, and sweet pea.

Steph and Sevan ran from Ealing Broadway to meet Kash and Gaby at the cutest little shed ever: the Cultivate self-service station at the Wildflower Trail. Kash had already filled two watering cans at the tank and was working on the last one - rightly so, as everyone found out that filling the can takes time.

Gaby, Steph, and Sevan set off to water twelve trees - some more obvious than others - in six wildflower beds. Waiting for the water to fill the cans offered an opportunity for lively water cooler conversations, but also for a call to action: the GoodGymers don’t like standing still with nothing to do, so they decided to take turns at spot litter picking while waiting. Kash, in the meantime, started weeding the bed with wild hedging.

The team used up all the water (and most of the task time) to come to the rescue of the thirsty trees. Before leaving the last five minutes for a weeding blitz, each GoodGymer had a go at sowing the seeds of love (according to Steph and Tears for Fears) or at the Wildflower Trail Mix (according to Sevan), with a crunchy insect insert. With sowing completed, the GoodGymers finished filling three Greener Ealing bags with weeds and carried them to the Cultivate HQ. Another rescue mission at Wildflower Trail completed!

Next week we are supporting the William Hobbayne charity with the maintenance of their outdoor space - sign up now!. In two weeks, we are back in Acton to work with Cultivate London collect leaves from the local school grounds.

It’s been 9 years since the 9th August 2016, when 21 GoodGymers set out from Ealing Broadway for Boston Manor Park for the very first GoodGym Ealing session: a park maintenance task combined with light fitness. I wasn’t there. And I never met any of those original Ealing GoodGymers, apart from two guests: Ivo, the founder, and Ed from GoodGym Central. If you look at our website, you cannot even tell anymore who led that session. But does it matter?

Since 2016, 918 GoodGymers in Ealing - that includes guests like John who visited us today - have done over 10200 good deeds! That’s quite a number, isn’t it? Many of those GoodGymers already moved on, left the borough, found other communities, or started families, but all of them contributed to making GoodGym Ealing a little bit better by at least one good deed!

And today, here we were, at Sandy Park in Hanwell, celebrating the 9 fantastic years of connecting with each other to help our community and isolated, older people within it. Some of the people celebrating today were new faces who joined this year. No matter how the group evolves, we are still the community connected by the same idea: doing good while getting fit. At the same time, for every one of us, GoodGym means something slightly different - and that’s ok - because we are all different. GoodGym is not a space where people should feel the need to fit in. GoodGym is here for us and should fit our lives and who we really are.

At last year's birthday party, I asked everyone to share what they think makes GoodGym Ealing great. The overwhelming majority said the people, the company, socialising. That’s why this year’s birthday was simple: a picnic in the park. We enjoyed the sun, the birthday cake baked by Nishy, the banana bread from Iram, who used the surplus fruit from Monday’s Food Cupboard task, the homemade pizza and cakes brought by Lena and Marta, the vegan sushi from John, pizzas and other snacks shared by Ash, Sevan, Steph Ducat, and Gaby. We enjoyed the relaxed afternoon, connecting with each other, and, most importantly, enjoyed being ourselves.

Happy birthday, GoodGym Ealing!

It was nice to have a later start than usual for a Saturday morning task and everyone was keen to earn their crust (and cake and strawberries) ahead of GoodGym Ealing's 9th birthday party in the afternoon. A wonderful 7 GoodGymers came to help Hanwell & Norwood Green Orchard Trail to water and trim one of the closest orchards to their base, The Piggeries.

Steph, Nishy and Gaby took charge of the giant bowser of water, feeding each of the trees in the orchard to keep them healthy and growing fruit through to the end of summer. The bowser was refilled over and over from the canal and in total, 300 litres of water found its way into the ground. With that done, they moved on to fruit removal instead of growing, clearing blackberry bearing brambles from the back fence.

On the edge of the orchard, Kash, Iram, Ash and Sevan were asked to cut back the large hedges bordering the canal towpath, with the warning that there may be some thick and spiky hawthorn branches lurking within. Ash and Iram grabbed shears, working quickly along the sides and top, inside and out, along with HANGOT's own members. Iram enjoyed testing her shear skills on someone else's hedge before trying to trim the one in her back garden. Sevan and Kash were lopping their way along at a slower pace, cutting one thick branch at a time and debating what height the hedge should be. As well as spiky branches, there were a surprising number of adrenaline loving snails who'd climbed high into the bushes and had their homes chopped away as part of the clean up.

Clive from HANGOT was amazed at what had been achieved with 13 volunteers over 90 minutes. The orchard was transformed, meaning that everyone could go and reward themselves for their hard work at the party in the park!

Last shift of the day as all good things come to an end but also everything needs to be cleaned and put away for the next session. Welcome Osama who got straight into cleaning in the kitchen. I stayed also to clean the kitchen as ai am one of the culprits who did make a mess in it. Then one of our regular at Goodgym did her first appearance at the Hub : Gabriela. I could not remember from which country Gabriela was and she told me Venezuela. Told her and introduce her to 3 regular voluteers(Sonia and her children Isabella & Albert) who are from South America. The strange thing is that they are from the same place in Venezuela 🇻🇪. Its a small world 🌎. Goodgym is not only helping and staying fit but it is also making new friends like it was the case today. Gabriela has new "Pana" or friends. They chatted during the session and exchanged numbers.