This year's GoodGym Ealing's Christmas party didn't encourage us to get more steps in - it was just opposite St Mary's Church, at the New Inn pub in South Ealing! Big thanks to Iram, who found and booked the venue! The room we had was nice and quiet - until we started popping the Christmas crackers!

The jokes from the crackers were a perfect, silly warm-up to the traditional GoodGym quiz, prepared by quiz masters Sevan and Iram. The prize? Chocolates - and, if you were vegan, chocolate bars. Yum!

Just as if there was not enough joy (there was!) during the quiz, Santa himself visited us. He was very secretive - we couldn't guess his identity or where he got his gifts from. From books and plush reindeer to best of the best shower kits, everyone received a little something to take back home.

What a fun and festive evening it's been!

Every community has its own traditions to celebrate festive times. GoodGym Ealing is no different. Our Christmas tradition since 2018 (with some breaks) has been kicking off the season by decorating the Christmas tree at St Mary’s in South Ealing to get the church ready for the Christmas services.

Eleven GoodGymers and one new GoodGymer-to-be were welcomed at the church by Wei Hei, Revd. Joy French and her husband, Clynt. It was a great opportunity to meet the vicar, who, although new to Ealing, showed a familiar warmth and - pun not intended - joy. We’ve been treated to some Christmas tunes, mulled wine, and minced pies, yum!

We had a Geordie Santa, The True Santa, and a bunch of helpful elves on our team. Not all the elves had expected to be following a Christmas dress code, but Thaiza got them covered! She brought all sorts of festive headwear, making everyone a bit more sparkly.

Some elves got busy decorating the tree, and others headed to the gallery for a work at height: a little bit of dusting. The good news was that our earlier session in September hadn’t left us with much dust to bust.

With Joy very pleased with the outcome of using our Christmastifying skills, the team headed to the New Inn across the road for more festivities: Christmas crackers, quiz time, and Secret Santa!

“Seek, and ye shall find”, says a quote from the Bible - but it doesn’t specify whether the sought and the found are necessarily the same thing. The November Grove Farm conservation day was all about searching and discovering. Mike treated us today to a unique quest, equipped with a treasure map from an unlikely source: Thames Water. More precisely, the map wasn’t really a map, but a clue: “that amuse adults”.

On the way to the presumed treasure location, we followed a golden, shiny trail, distracted by the lustre of beer cans scattered along the path. We diligently collected the spoils, packed them in a bag, and cunningly hid our riches inside a rubbish bin. Next to the bin, we made an amusing discovery: a couple of pieces of illustrated literature for the enthusiasts of bottom-heavy ladies. Was that what amuses adults?

Five GoodGymers and three Friends of Grove Farm pressed on, venturing off the path into the wilderness, where Mike stopped and revealed what sort of treasures we were after. The treasure had been buried on the grounds of Grove Farm a century ago, under a manhole owned by Thames Water. But the riches it contained were not of a material kind - that would have been, of course, rather desirable, as we could have funded Friends of Grove Farm efforts to maintain the nature reserve. However, there was more at stake. The beautiful wood anemone patch up the hill was threatened by an underground water blockage, which only Thames Water could fix. But first, we had to find the manhole and clear the access.

After three people pointed out that it would have been great to have a metal detector, we accepted the reality (in which there was no metal detector) and got stuck into hacking the brambles and branches, raking cuttings and leaves, and poking the ground with a fork or a spade. After a few false alarms, resulting in digging out bricks, pipes, pots, and tyres, we tightened our search area to more accurately match the what3words phrase “what.amuses.adults” - to no avail. One of us came up with a hypothesis that a tree with many stems growing in the middle of the patch we scoured might have easily grown right from the manhole within the hundred years - an idea we feared to accept.

It would have been a privilege to report to my dear readers that the mission ended with great success. Alas, we haven’t found the manhole. All we discovered was rubbish hiding in the undergrowth. That had to suffice for a treasure at the end of a worthy quest. We will continue our search in December, so wrap yourself warmly, Dear Explorers, and let us know if you want to put your name down for another adventure here!

Hanwell School of Boxing, a volunteer-led charity offering sports activities to young people of all backgrounds, moved to their current site in 2011. Tonight's task owner, Linda, had been one of the key players in making the move happen. She told us about the building’s history and the improvements made over the past fourteen years. But nothing lasts forever. The wooden posts that have stood at the entrance since 2011 were now rotten, and Linda thought it was time to replace them with five plastic bollards.

Five GoodGym runners who braved the drizzle on their 3 km run to Hanwell split into engineering and sweeping teams. The builders, Steph Ducat and Kash, had the job of removing the aged wooden posts and then digging a trench as per Linda's instructions. Paving blocks, no longer held in place by the poles, and tree roots were only minor challenges, solved by a mattock found by Linda and Steph's jigsaw puzzle skills. The real enemy was the stubborn old concrete, not easily removable to make space for the new bollards. The good news? Nothing is set in concrete at the GoodGym tasks, and there's always an option to change the approach.

After consulting Linda, the engineers agreed the best way forward was to set the new posts in place with minimal digging, then pour a mix of cement and water around them. Steph and Kash flattened the soil and laid the first layer of mixed cement - without a trowel! Who needs a trowel if you can use a random square piece of foam found on premises? The technique Linda suggested for the second layer was to scatter the cement around the poles, then pour water on top. The speed-engineering brought concrete results: maybe not the straightest poles, but certainly stable!

Meanwhile, Thaiza, Harvey and Sevan did what GoodGymers are best at in autumn: leaf sweeping. With rakes and brooms in hand, they set a goal to clear the whole tarmac surface leading to the boxing club. Ambitious! The leaves might not have been heavyweight, but there was an abundance of them. The sweeping team bagged as many leaves as they could fit in Linda's car, who would then distribute the green waste where it was needed. The rest of the fallen leaves had to be swept to the side - maybe for another time to bag. The result? A leaf-free driveway to the boxing school!

Before the team set off for another soggy 3km, Linda invited them inside the club and traditionally offered them hot chocolate and minced pies. The sweet treat was a lovely reward that powered the GoodGymers all the way back to Ealing Broadway.