On a cloudy, yet no longer rainy Tuesday evening, Sevan took Ealing GoodGymers for a run through Walpole Park to Lammas Enclosure. Surprisingly, we went past the Transition Orchard, not stopping there this time, then past the tennis courts. Did our run leader miss the task location? Today we met Trevor from Ealing Transition at a new woodchip pile. He challenged us to fill our wheelbarrows first before he would take us to the area in need of GoodGym hands.

"You are filling these wheelbarrows six times faster than I would!" - Trevor.

Trevor showed us a patch of tiny trees planted last year. During the late spring, the snips were having a tough time, bullied by the brambles that grew much quicker. Trevor had already started rescuing the saplings to prevent the bullies from completely taking over, and we could see piles of thorny cuttings around. Our job was to free all the remaining tiny trees and cover the ground with woodchip to suppress further growth of weeds.

At first, the whole team focused on taking down the brambles, with A.B. and Freya at the forefront. Gradually, the chopping team started losing its members to the woodchipping job: first Steph Ducat, then Harvey, and finally Kash. Sevan stayed in the small forest area to rake and coordinate the woodchip operations.

As the cuttings heap grew, the woodchip pile shrunk, eventually running out completely. Just 45 minutes of GoodGymming transformed a sad, overgrown thicket into a little forest of happy saplings, thriving surrounded by a thick layer of mulch.

"On behalf of the trees - thank you!" - Trevor.

We are keeping our fingers crossed for the trees that had been now set for a fresh start in their long life - but we will be back to check in on them later in the summer and fight back the thorny bullies if needed!

Next week we have a totally different type of task: we'll be teaming up with Ealing Repair Café again to reduce fabric waste and create goods for the community! Sign up now. It's an indoor task, so the weather is not an excuse 😉

GoodGym Ealing's first visit to Our Lady of the Visitation Primary School in Greenford revealed a huge space behind the building that most schools would be envious of, with play areas and green space. They were part of a year long trial scheme with Sustainability Managers for Schools to improve their environmental footprint. Huge progress had already been made, with the school recently being awarded Distinction status as a Green School. There was more still to do and the children wanted to reclaim an overgrown wasteland to create a small nature reserve, which is where GoodGym came in.

Task owner Rachel, along with children, parents and staff, had already made a lot of progress in the space. That included removing weeds from the pond, which had started to attract newts, frogs and dragonflies that weren't there before. There was still a big list of work to do, including:

• Getting blanket weed out of the pond
• Planting some pond flowers
• Helping to create a path
• Hanging bird boxes
• ...and a lot more

With only 3 GoodGymers at the task, Rachel was asked "what can GoodGymers do in 2 hours for you that others can't?" and the answer was to clear brambles shoots and stalks from the path and mark it out with logs. A classic GoodGym task. Let the digging commence!

For 90 minutes there was digging of brambles, pulling of roots and the occasional cursing following stings and scratches. One particularly large bramble cluster needed Kash, Sevan and Steph to all take turns to dig it out, with Steph eventually being victorious. Steph though he'd struck gold when he found roots that looked like truffles, but the group didn't need pigs to work out that they weren't the real thing, so back to the day job Steph. Kash helped Rachel move logs to mark out the path and by the end of the task, the nature reserve was ready to get a delivery of wood chip to spread along the bramble-free walkway.

And Rachel's view?

"You've done a great job at clearing out a lot of sh!t"

We'll take that complement and we'll be back for more fun tasks at Our Lady of the Visitation school soon.

After the earlier Wildlife Survey in Southall Rec's Tiny Forest, Sevan could see that it was quite messy. A discarded bakery bag was used to collect food packaging, beer cans and plastic cups. It seems like the benches are a popular drinking spot, as evidenced by a Zubr drinker who was sitting on s bench wondering what on earth all the GoodGymers were up to this afternoon.

As well as the beer cans, there were lots of slices of lime. They were left to rot down and who knows, maybe lime trees will grow in their place.

This Sunday's late afternoon session at Southall's Tiny Forest was a part of the Wildlife Survey that takes place each year in May. After Saturday's surveys in Acton and Hanger Hill, we noticed that each new session brought more GoodGymers involved. Today we even had a guest from GoodGym Hounslow, Pezh!

Pezh joined Sevan and Kash and Steph, a trio who stuck with each other for four GoodGym tasks that day: running, walking, bramble & balsam bashing, woodchipping, and, of course, drinking coffee - what else would keep them going today!

💔 Sevan, who hadn't stopped believing in butterflies, conducted a third butterfly count this weekend - again, with zero butterflies recorded. Those butterflies are surely breaking records (in a no-show category) - and Sevan's heart!
🪰 Kash tried her luck with the pollinator survey - spotting a few flies, a bumblebee and a honeybee
🐜 Pezh and Steph had probably the most luck, uncovering a lot of wildlife in their ground dweller survey, particularly ants and larvae! Steph said the survey did not even allow him to enter as many ants as he and Pezh estimated under one of the tiles - over 50!
🚮 A true GoodGymer never says no to doing an extra good deed! Sevan made a makeshift rubbish bag out of a bakery packaging he had found in the Tiny Forest and conducted a Tiny Litter Pick. He was more successful in that than his earlier survey and uncovered the uncomfortable truth - Southall Tiny Forest was attracting more litter than butterflies!

We are not done with the wildlife surveys in Ealing, oh no! One more is coming in a week's time at Cuckoo Park and we hope to see you there!

The second appearance GoodGym Ealing made at Featherstone High School Learnscape was all about woodchipping a path running through the length of the garden, connecting its two gates. Volunteers Alex, Gurpal, Andrew and Ki were very eager to get the task going as five heavy bags of woodchip were awaiting to be spread. The only missing part was more hands!

Luckily, GoodGym came with a strong team again:

• Jags, who regularly engages in Southall's community work, within or outside GoodGym
• Sevan, Steph and Kash returning to Featherstone School after the fierce log moving last month
• Rainu and Roberta coming back for more GoodGymming after joining the team recently

We had three wheelbarrows for ten people to complete the woodchipping task. How many did we use? None! Dragging and tipping bags proved to be more effective, both as a full-body workout and as a way of distributing woodchip. But that's not all! Between moving bags and spreading the chips, we had to lay a membrane on the entire length of the path and pin it to hard, dry soil. We had one mallet for the pins, so we had to get creative!

Having 90 minutes for the task, we knew we had to get focussed. Did we? Driven by our desire for a challenge, we allowed ourselves to get distracted by a side mini landscaping project. We fulfilled Alex's and Jags' vision of an outdoor classroom, having a mound of soil, spare woodchip, heavy logs and donated rubber mats as materials. See the outcome in the photos!

Although we have not started woodchipping until about 20 minutes before the end of the task - believe it or not - we've made it: the new path was laid!

"Thank you so much for all your time, advice and work - I can't believe how much we achieved in the time!" - Alex, the task owner.

With another satisfying session under the belt that Sunday, we split: running, walking or cycling, back home or for yet another task in the day.

Four explorers Kash, Sevan, Harvey and Steph Ducat set off and jogged after a coffee break to meet Professor Richard from Ealing Greenwayers in Greenford near the Jungle of Gurnell. Explorer Andrew was already there and we also had another French explorer Maxime who decided to adventure outside of his borough. The explorers braved the jungle of Gurnell in search of the fabled land Professor Richard mentioned at the beginning of the meeting: Eldorado aka the Balsam Field. The field was a treasure for the explorers, but it could not be seen from the trail path. Was this just a myth or would the intrepid explorers find their way to the holy Balsam Field? Armed with loppers, shears and slashers the adventurers battled their way through the impenetrable jungle to find their first treasure...a lime bike!! The jungle opened up to an open space with rocks, flowing water of the river and the famous Balsam Field that Professor Richard notoriously spoke about to the GG explorers. While part of the explorers kept clearing the highway to Eldorado, the others started removing the Balsam from the field. Another successful expedition for Professor Richard and his explorers - welcome to Eldorado!! Impact was gi-ga-normous : words from Richard

There were an impressive number of finishers at today's Pitshanger Junior parkrun, taking all of the GoodGymers present by surprise, including Gaby who was handing out the finish tokens. In all, 102 crossed the finish line, which is awesome. Gaby was also surprised to see the red t-shirts of the other GoodGymers as she hadn't known that today was GoodGym Ealing's regular session at the parkrun.

Around the course, Kash, Steph, Harvey and Sevan were marshalling. As usual, the majority of children had a great morning, while a few would rather have been in bed and were dragged around the course by their parents. Sevan caught one very young runner who tried to sneak to the finish line after only completing 1 lap, readily admitting that they still had further to run and who did eventually complete the 2km course.

If you'd like to join in next month, you can sign up here.