14 wonderful people joined me in Brent to run 5km and help Clitterhouse Farmhouse!

On a beautiful summer evening we met at the Queensbury and boy there were a lot of you! We welcomed Matthew who was at Goodgym for the first time and then went thru the intro and news (GG Olympics!) before going through a quick warm up!

It was quite a stop start journey, not least as we passed through the hustle and bustle of Cricklewood but we kept up a good pace and were soon at the Farmhouse! There we met Patrick and Elizabeth who were incredibly grateful for our presence and the fact there were so many of us!

Our task was to do some clearing and weeding in around straw bales that were being used to grow all kinds of plants from mange tout - to luffas (yes apparently you grow a luffa/loofah!), we did some watering and we generally made everything look lovely!

Everyone worked hard for 30 mins in the evening sun and before we knew it it was time to go! Thanks to the team for leaving some water and snacks out for us! We had a tour of the main garden and then had a group photo before heading back to base!

After a speedy run back, with some traffic light squats thrown in we were back at the Queensbury! We stretched and then headed for home or a deserved beverage! Fantastic night everyone!

Next week we head down to Queens Park to deliver Queen Park Community Council's community newsletter - all the details here.

Cheers,
Pritesh

Eight amazing runners correctly predicted there would be no rain and joined me in Brent to help NW2 Residents Association with some mega weeding and ran over 3km!

We said a big GGB welcome to Lisa, Sula and Vinay who joined goodgym for the first time. So great to have you with us! And welcomed back an Brent veteran, Sadhana joining for her first run in over two years after injury! Welcome back!

After a quick intro we split into a running group with me and a walking group with Liz! The walkers set off and we took a slightly different route which immediately put is in the path of a caterpillar that was clearly lost! Lisa carefully helped it out of harms way and we were off again!

Reaching our destination we saw Marie and her team on a traffic island on the busy Cricklewood Broadway! Surely nine of us weren't all going to be working there? And we weren't!

Marie led us off on to the pavement and then showed us the areas that needed chopping back, weeding and litter picking. We were sooned joined by the walking group and so everyone dived in! Some of the weeds were hugely overgrown and there was so much litter in there too! We remarked on what a difference it makes between different local authorities as the main road is the dividing line and one was so much more looked after than the other.

After a good 25 minutes of hard work it was time to stop with the NW2 volunteers, the Cricklewood Baptist church volunteers and our group we had made a huge difference! We weren't able to finish everything off but I am sure we will be back!

We posed for a group photo and then split again, this time Liz took the runners and I went with the walking group and before we knew it we were stretched, back at base and ready for home.

Thanks everyone and see you next week - I am just finalising details but we should be off to Clitterhouse Farmhouse for some more weeding work!

See you then,
Pritesh