6 wonderful Goodgymers kicked off a whole new year of GG action by helping the Friends of the Meadow Orchard go hunting for last season's fallen christmas trees to be converted into hugel beds.

Huge-l News If True

And so it begins. 2025 ushered its new GG Haringey year with the threat of inclement snow but that wasn't going to stop our brave Goodgymmers. Armed with puffa jackets and more layers than we could count, our Goodgymmers ran, cycled, and walked to the task in the West of the borough where the good folk from the Meadow Orchard had pressed the Big Red Button labelled Goodgym: Press For Help and we heeded the call.

It wasn't the promise of hot spiced cider and wassailing that brought our team out, I swear, but it certainly helped as the first dusting of snow began falling during our run. Thankfully, almost as soon as the dusting began it had stopped and the evening ended up being quite mild, if only in comparison to the weather elsewhere in the country.

Our team was guided to a lovely long and wide avenue of fancy houses where we were handed a list with house numbers with trees to collect. We wasted no time in pairing up and before you knew it, our teams were buzzing all over the road picking up huge trees and collecting them on the green at the bottom of the avenue. Once we were satisfied all the trees on the list had been collected, we picked them up and carried them the kilometre or so back to the Meadow Orchard, destined to become hugel beds in the not-so-distant future.

Once at the Orchard, Alan from the Friends group, always a man of his word, proceeded to entertain us with fire-making and hot cider. What a better way to kick off GG 2025.

Super Sarah will be leading the session next week, as we fill up holes at Lordship Rec to ensure the safety of our local parkruns and junior parkruns. Come!

(*) you had to be there

Seven Goodgymmers met on a very cold night to do some digging for Laura at Tottenham Green.

To get us ready for bulb planting we did a warm up of some side step squats and fast feet. The dreaded Sally squats did not make a show but there was squatting none the less. This kept us warm far a little whilst we waited for Laura to arrive.

She needed us to dig a six inch trench for a bulb lasagne. Which this Haringey lot has now renamed planting onions.

With gloves, digging forks and a shovels the team began the hard graft of ploughing the space for the bulbs.

At first the task seemed never ending but before you know it the trench with ready for the bulbs. In true lasagne style it was layered with a line of bulbs, then some, leaves, soil, a different type of bulbs, and a final layer of soil.

After one hour the team had finish the task and were ready to head to warmer territories.

6 Goodgymmers gave it a good go at painting a really large ceiling at the Community Hub in Wood Green.

Hitting The Ceiling

They say they didn't paint the Sistine Chapel in one day and if it took Michelangelo 4 years for a little paint job in Italy, you can't help but be impressed at the amount of ceiling our Goodgymmers covered in the space of an hour in good ol' Wood Green. But I'm jumping the gun here a bit. Let's rewind.

Raj and Paul met Gramps at Blue House Yard for the evening's run while Julie, Ed, and Niamh opted for the walk/cycle to task option.

Once we arrived, we were pleased to find that the team at the Hub - led by Laurie - had already been at work, taping up edges and painting the most awkward bits of ceiling work so that we could just get on with a bit of painting.

Armed with rollers, some of our team tried to outdo each other with war stories of DIYs past but very soon, they were all brought to the same level by the reality of painting a ceiling the size of a small pacific island country.

Ignoring back pain and neck cricks, our Goodgymmers put their heart and soul into this paint job. Heck, one of our Goodgymmers even managed to paint some of her own hair onto the ceiling. Eat your heart out, Michelangelo.

Alas, there's only so much you can do in an hour and we had to miss a corner of the room. Luckily, Laurie and the rest of the team were staying behind and assured us the job would be finished on the night.

We're back at the Hub next week to crack on with the wall painting. Join us. The more, the merrier.