Another Tuesday evening equals GoodGym H&F! Tonight we had a two task Tuesday! While one group headed over to Hammersmith to lend a hand at TRAID, another group headed up to White City to help out at the Church of St Michael & St George.

It was a case of déjà vu from the last time we were at the Church of St Michael & St George, with many GoodGymers walking, running and cycling past the side entrance of the church! Hidden amongst some overhanging vegetation was the 'secret' side gate to where everyone was gathering to tackle tonight's task.

The group were greeted by the vicar, Ben, who explained the task at hand - another case of déjà vu, we were helping with the same task as before - moving garden waste from giant industrial sacks into smaller black sacks so they could be taken to the tip. Bags of fun! We knew the drill! We gloved up, passed around the black bin bags and spread ourselves out around the giant industrial sacks. The group set to work with everyone gathering up armfuls of twigs, branches, and cuttings from the industrial bags into the black bin bags.

Ben helpfully prepared all the black bin bags ready for when we needed a fresh bag to fill - I'm sure many minutes were saved with us not having to struggle to find the opening of them...we've all bin there before!

Team AABC: Aine, Analiese, Beth and Chris worked at one end of the industrial bag train like a well oiled machine. They quickly filled up lots of bin bags with the twigs and cuttings and worked together to cut down the larger twigs and branches into 'bin bag friendly' sizes using the secateurs on hand. It wasn't long before they were delving deeper into the bag, amongst Lucy's favourite 's' word! 🐌 . Thankfully, we didn't need to save Lucy from them tonight as she helping out at TRAID....although we do have a TRAID and tested method of doing so!

On the other end of the industrial bag train was Team Imperial: Bethan, Tom, Christian and Helen. This team seemed to have some larger and thicker branches in their industrial bags, along with some very tangled branches which when Bethan pulled them out resembled antlers!

Tom expertly negotiated the thorns and snails in the bags, proving he wasn't no 'Tom, Dick or Harry' and rather an expert hand! As the team got to the bottom of the bag they found piles of soil and after gathering it up using hands only, Helen and Christian decided to speed the process up by tipping up the bag into the bin bag, before implementing a quick sieve like action through the small hole at the bottom of the bag to finish the job - genius!

After an hour we'd conquered all four of the full giant industrial bags and they were now all empty, ready for the gardener, Andre to fill up once again - you could say that weed had our fill of bagging up garden waste! We took the final couple of bin bags around the side of the church and piled them up on the very large pile of about 30 black bin bags that were ready to be taken to the tip.

Ben thanked us all and handed us all a lovely juicy satsuma to finish the night. Following a brief chat with Ben we all said our goodbyes and headed off in our different directions home. Top work team! 🙌

Big welcome along to Christian who joined us for their first GoodGym session - great to meet you, hope you enjoyed it!

Ankle still injured