Welcome back and thank you to the team who turned out for our first session of 2025. And what a great one to start with - sorting donations for Care4Calais at their East London storage facility.

We were met by one of their long term volunteers, Andy, who explained what needed to be done - essentially weed out any donations not worth keeping, and then sort the clothes into piles of similar items (childrens, mens, womens etc) - and that we could approach it in any way we liked... This brought back memories of similar "sorting" activities from our lockdown-era sessions for Crisis at Christmas and we were only to happy to put our experience into practice. We made a good dent into the big donations pile, leaving behind what we hope is a more usefully organised pile that can be distributed on to people seeking asylum across East London.

We'll be back there again in a couple of weeks (and potentially beyond if they still need our help...) - as the pictures show, it's dark, so please remember head torches if you've got them! We've also got some other great tasks lined up for January - Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground next week (soon to be listed) but also a long awaited return to the Up Garden on Saturday to do some painting - sign up here.

Saturday morning - perfect time for a parkrun goodgym combo! Wanstead flats the meeting point. For some of us the first time parkrunning at Wanstead flats! Great morning for it. One of the few occasions I haven’t seen someone taken down by the muddy section. Good warm up for a couple of Sunday morning half marathon heroes in the group.

Then on to Emmanuel church. Anticipating the big crowds of Sunday morning, the church were keen to get the leaves that had fallen on the paths around the church cleared - avoid some potentially hazardous situations. Initially, we divvied the task, boys to bag the leaves, girls to rake (hence “bag boys for life”) but ultimately everyone was chipping in with everything. We counted up and think it was probably around a squillion leaves that we cleared between us and the other volunteers at the church so all in all, job well done.

Watch out for more Saturday parkrun goodgym combos in the coming weeks as we’re trying to work out when our next instalment is gonna be and we’re definitely thinking this side of Xmas!

A rainy forecast wasn’t going to stop GoodGym Newham on Wednesday evening as 6 of us met at the Print House for the all important pre task briefing and safety reminders before heading to regular task Abbey Gardens.

The gardens want to be as sustainable and self sufficient as possible, and part of that is managing and producing their own compost from any green waste, so we had a really important job of tackling a mountain of twigs and branches, removing the leaves (“de-leafing“) and breaking them down into smaller pieces so that they could go into the composters. Armed with various shears, loppers and gloves, we successfully avoided thorns and potential spiders to make a decent dent in the twig pile and top up the compost.

It was also great to see the new greenhouse they have put up on the space we cleared on a group run not so long ago, with Adam helping with the finishing touches by clearing some rogue brambles that had found their way into the back.

We debated this week’s random weekly question during the task - favourite pizza topping? A couple of classics with margheritas and meat feasts. Some international submissions including the double bacon cheeseburger pizza with extra brie (I think prawns were mentioned too…). Tuna seeded to be the overall winner though - give it a go if you haven’t tried it yet!

Luckily the rain didn’t start until just before we finished at the gardens, so we arrived back at the Print House relatively dry, completed all our cool down stretches, and celebrated with the signature post-run orange and lemonade (in slightly DIY fashion).

From next week GoodGym Newham will be moving to Tuesday night for our group runs, along with all our regular members we’re hoping to also see a few more faces both old and new who can make it on Tuesdays! Next week we’ll either be flyering or off to the allotments - details to follow, but sign up here and see you then.