Fourteen fearless GoodGymmers met at the Phoenix Cinema to brave the cold and spread some woodchip at Martin Primary in East Finchley.

We were joined by Veronique for her first group run and Liz touristing from Camden and fresh from celebrating 300 (THREE ACTUAL HUNDRED) good deeds last week. Welcome and well done!

It was a cold night but we agreed we would keep moving and get warm. A slightly elongated run there took us along the back roads and away from the traffic and got us warm.

Arriving at Martin Primary we were greeted by the Caretaker, Tristran, who explained our task. We would be shovelling and shifting woodchip before spreading it along the pathways in the open space outside the school. We got to work. Saba and Fiona too charge of spreading the woodchip, while everyone else grabbed a shovel, rake or wheelbarrow.

It was hard work which was good because it kept us warm! Some brilliant work shovelling mean the wheelbarrows got filled in no time, while the spreaders made quick work of it once it was delivered. After half an hour we had made brilliant progress and got through the pile of woodchip and spread it along the entire path! Brilliant effort which will make a good difference to the kids and the school's outdoor space.

After that it was time for our fitness session. Using the outdoor basketball court, we ran laps with slower ones for warm ups and then two back to back faster laps focusing on working hard and keeping the extra pace consistent. It was a marvellous effort with some GGB runners looking pretty speedy.

After that it was a short run back to the cinema and to the warm. Well done everyone!! See you soon.

This morning, six GoodGymmers and their dog (😍) met up to help Stephens House and Gardens in Barnet (including Veronique in her first ever GoodGym good deed!! Awesome stuff!)

Stephens House and Gardens were left in trust for the people of Finchley by Henry "Inky" Stephens. Inky made his name in indelible ink (hence the apt moniker), and was equally keen to leave his mark on society through various philanthropic acts. Although the Gardens are open to the public, they're not technically a public park and so they often arrange volunteering days for help with what some gardening maintenance.

Today, our task was to help out by clearing up leaves (to be honest, most gardening tasks until February will probably involve leaf clearing in some form or other. To expand on Paul's comment below: it's a leaf-fall job, but someone's got to do it).

As we started to rake up the leaves, the Head Gardener gave us one clear direction: "Please rake everything up into one big pile of leaves so I can bag it all up tomorrow". However, with high winds forecast, as more and more volunteers started to filter in, we decided to use the extra manpower to fill builder's bags with the leaves and to drag them off somewhere into the distance (I didn't get close enough to see where, but I'm assuming that they ended up somewhere useful).

A seemingly infinite amount of raking, scooping and dragging later, the area we were working in looked much clearer (at least, we were able to see the green, green grass of ground!), and we enjoyed some mini cupcakes and that smug feeling of having accomplished something before heading home.