Yesterday was National Fitness Day, and at GoodGym Hounslow we celebrated in the best way possible - with a brand new task that took a lot of hard work, a run along the river, and a workout that involved endurance, power, strength and stability challenges!

We started off with a warm up at the Town Hall before heading to Green Dragon school in Brentford. The volunteers there have cleared away a space that hasn't been used for 15 years to create a new growing area for the kids.

We soon arrived and were wowed by how huge the school was and how many cool things they had there - an outside kitchen, play areas and not to mention the gang of four foxes watching us work with interest!

The main job was to tackle the hefty brambles which needed to be taken away by the root. Easier said than done! The brambles were so old that they were seriously deep in the ground - which meant a lot of GG elbow grease.

Meanwhile Ariane was grappling with a very dead but very invasive plant. Armed with secateurs and sheer grit, she took it to task, eventually clearing the area completely.

Amazing work everybody. All that was left to do was a fitness challenge that covered flamingos for stability, half burpees for power, press ups for strength and step ups for endurance. Seeing how many we could complete in one minute was a tough ask, but everybody smashed it.

Next week we're back to Chiswick House - see you there!

With the rose being my long pink gardening gloves. These were an absolute life saver tackling the very overgrown brambles along the side of the front garden. I hacked and bagged solidly for 90 mins and managed to mostly clear it.

Beatriz, Emily Tabitha Pete and Lee worked hard to help pack up all the stock for Traid charity shop in Kilburn

I cycled over to meet Miss J and immediately saw the job at hand upon arrival - the front garden was overrun with weeds and brambles. In fact the side passage and the back garden were too, but the priority was to get clear access to the bins to make it safer for Miss J to take the rubbish out. So I got to work hacking away, getting as much of the roots as I could, which was pretty vigorous work! Thankfully I had some good tools to help me. In an hour and a half I'd cleared the path and filled many bags, but there's plenty more to be done. Miss J was very grateful but would love more help to get the rest done!

It was a very damp transition into Autumn for the Hounslow GoodGymers, as they made their way to the final leaf clearing task with Cultivate London. The team quickly got stuck into filling bags with the final batch of leaf mulch and shifting it over to the prep area, where Steph made tipping and compressing leaves look easy!

There was considerable football chat as we got the final load of mulch cleared, ready for Cultivate to pack down the area. Bags were refilled as quickly as they could be taken away for emptying.

We also helped Cultivate with packing up soil bags, tidying pots, and clearing out the compost bins. And we were lucky enough that the rain held off for us, giving us a brief glimpse of a rainbow. To top it all off, we were even blessed with the company of Shadow, the neighborhood cat. After a swift and productive 90 minutes, we ran back towards the town hall for a good stretch.

At the WLQP’s brilliant fifth birthday celebrations it was all hands on deck to help the party proceed to perfection! There was marshalling to be done and decorations to put up, but perhaps the most fun job was on the make up station where beautiful bright colours were the order of the day. It was brilliant to see everybody celebrating this inclusive, supportive local organisation in style!