The legend says that it was at Brent River Park's 50th birthday when Kash from GoodGym and Ben, the leader of Clean Up River Brent, fixed a date for a joint wading event in Pitshanger. When the day came, it became clear that the theme would be the famed balsam bash - the removal of invasive plants with stalks like giant celery and purple flowers of stunning beauty. The gorgeous flowers were particularly troublesome as they were starting to explode, sending hundreds of Himalayan Balsam seeds into the air and water.

The Balsam Bashers group assembled on Sunday morning at Pitshanger Park Bowls Pavilion. Rachel, Lara, Bob, and Martin were busy choosing the right size of waders and listening to Ben's health and safety brief. GoodGymers Sevan, Steph, and Kash were already in the park, after volunteering at junior parkrun and queuing for coffee at the park café. Kymm from GoodGym Hounslow, experienced with balsam bashing, joined them shortly to try on waders for the first time. The pair she got was not the most comfortable to walk in.

Kymm: "Are they supposed to be that harsh on the feet?"
Ben: "Is it some sort of grit? I actually like it, but I'm a masochist."

Comfortable or not, waders were worn by everyone to protect skin from Weil's disease and other nastiness hidden in contaminated water. They also shielded us from brambles, nettles, and even giant hogweed. With long rubber gloves, wading poles, and hi-viz, the team was ready for a serious adventure. We wandered west along the River Brent and found a suitable place to carefully descend from the bank. On a hot day, the water felt nice and cool through the waders.

Guided by the wading poles to avoid the treacherous drops in the river bed, we walked downstream, bashing the balsam on the way, some of us from the water, others occasionally from the bank. We went as far as the footbridge leading to St Benedict's School. Before heading off, we took with us some imposing balsam specimens for a special photoshoot by Martin Sapsed for his project documenting the work of volunteers across different fields. Sadly, we had to remove the best-looking flowers to minimise the risk of balsam seeding on the way. We think we still made quite an impression on the park visitors.

Passer-by: "It looks like a religious festival!"

Our pagan procession returned to the pavilion, where Martin assembled us for a carefully designed Balsam Basher group shot.

Martin: "I'm looking for a look of grim determination."

We gave Martin the most serious stares we could muster, then happily took off the waders as we felt we were starting to boil after having left the cooling water. Some would describe the atmosphere of getting released from waders as whiffy. Ben said it's been a year with the most wading involved so far and promised to give the rubbery equipment a thorough wash before the next session. We're looking forward to another CURB event to do good for biodiversity in Ealing and sweat in fresh waders again!

Care4Calais had a big job for GoodGym this afternoon. To prepare around 130 packs of clothing for refugees in one hotel. Some of the residents had been given clothes previously and today, the second big delivery would complete the task.

Boxes of clothes were piled up waiting for the team, who welcomed back Mohamed for his first GoodGym Ealing task since moving back west 👋. The ask was fairly straight forward, to make standard clothing packs in a single size at a time, on a larger scale than normal. Everything was set up like a production line to make the system quick and easy:

1. Open a bag 🛍️
2. Place socks inside 🧦
3. Hand on to the next person 🤜🤛
4. Add men's underwear 🩲
5. Add a hoodie 🧥
6. Hand on to the next person 🤜🤛
7. Add jogging bottoms 👖
8. Add 2 t-shirts 👕👕
9. Done ✅

With much of the clothing being black or navy, the team needed ways to make sure the right clothes ended up in the right bags.

"Are these hoodies or joggers?" - GoodGymer
"Which half naked man is on the pack?"
"The hoodies have topless men on them too, which doesn't make sense" - Tamzin, task owner

The "naked man process" worked up until the team realised that some packs had 2 hoodies and no trousers in them. Cue a rapid search through 40ish packs to identify which ones needed fixing.

Despite the hoodie issues early on, an improved system meant that the job of creating the packs finished early, with a range of small, medium, large and XL bags tightly packed into boxes.

After the rapid and fairly repetitive production line, came the slow, creative piece. Fitting all of those boxes into 2 family cars needed thought, inventiveness and some force. With both cars full to bursting and ready to be delivered to Care4Calais' beneficiaries, it was time to wrap up and wander home in the late afternoon sun.

At Pitshanger Junior parkrun this morning, there were big cheers for one runner who received a grey wristband. What does a grey wristband mean, I hear you ask? It shows that they have run 100 Junior parkruns and to celebrate, they brought everyone a tub of sweets to share 🍬🙌.

There were 5 GoodGymers who were in the park early on a Sunday to help make the event a success. Jacquie, Gaby and Steph were marshaling around the course, making sure that everyone made it round safely. Kash and Sevan were in the funnel area, with Kash taking on her favourite role, barcode scanning and Sevan was timekeeping.

In all, 86 runners completed the course, with many of them dipping their hand into the tub of sugary treats. One of them was hungrier than the others:

"I want 4 sweets" - Runner
"Why do you want 4?" - Barcode Scanner
"Because I like 4" - Runner

Eventually they were negotiated down from 4 packs of sweets to 2, leaving more for the other children and adults to share.

A lone GoodGymer put on his greasy overalls and headed to the London Transport Museum Depot this morning. Sevan met with the team from All Aboard Club and had the pleasure of placing the sign on the road to direct today's attendees up to the depot. On the way back, a child who was very early asked if he could go and play already - an hour before opening time - so Sevan had to tell him to be patient and keep watching the passing tube trains. There's a perfectly placed bench to do just that.

Up in the track building area, loops were the order of the day. Sevan created 2 that then evolved during the build, with more and more people coming along and adding bits. Unlike most All Aboard Club sessions, the track was ready 20 minutes before doors opened. So early that not even the children who sneak up the stairs ahead of time had turned up yet. All of the builders had a few minutes to sit back (next to the fan) and appreciate what they'd created.

So, what happened to the boy who was so eager that he was outside an hour early? He wasn't the first one in, nor the second. He was number 3 and went straight to the box of locomotives and carriages to make his perfect train. Maybe the big trains outside held his attention for a bit too long.

Hot Saturday lunch time and I arrived at Mrs R after a morning community mission. Its was already 29degres at 1pm. Todays mission was not to melt i the sun : weeding the front garden as loads of grass and weed in between the paved bricks, but also against the neighbors wall. I wss following the small amount of shade when wedding ..shaddy man!!!Mrs R came out with an ice cold can of coke and a bottle of water. I did not melt and the weed plus grass had vanished. Been there, sun that!!!

This Saturday we ticked off another HANGOT orchard from our bucket list: Blackberry Corner - probably the furthest and most difficult to water. It's been a hot and dry summer, so the fruit trees were desperate for water if they were to bear fruit this year.

Before heading to Blackberry Corner on the other side of the canal, Steph Ducat filled the 100-litre water tank at Bernd's Shed to be used throughout another hot week.

Blackberry Corner didn't have any facilities for watering, so the volunteers had a proper workout, carrying the buckets and cans from the far away canal. Luckily, a friendly boater offered to throw her hose through the fence, which would make the journey with buckets much shorter. But what a challenge it was to discover where the hose was located! Frank and others from HANGOT had a rummage in the overgrowth along the fence to finally find it.

Apart from watering, our side task was raking the grass Frank had cut using a scythe. We'd then spread then grass on the cut nettles between the fruit trees. According to Frank, the released seeds would promote the grass growth in the following year, hopefully reducing the spread of nettles.

It was the first session for Victoria, who quickly got stuck in, watering the thirsty trees. Welcome Victoria - you have definitely deserved to come back later in the year to try some of the fruits of your labour! The watermelon lollies kindly given to us today by the boater with the hose, were a bonus reward and more than we expected from the session!