For GoodGym Ealing's second compost task of they week, they became purveyors of fine compost, free to a good home, allotment or dog peeing spot. Anyone could turn up with a container and take away as much as they'd like. Opening the tool storage, the 6 GoodGymers present were surprised to find 2 barrows prefilled with compost as well as the shovels and wheelbarrows essential for the task.

The barrows turned into another job for the team as Steph, Max and Jo went to fill the second bay in the Walled Garden, continuing the work from Tuesday's group run. Today was Jo's first session with GoodGym and she did an amazing job, shovelling compost like a pro with the others 💪 🥳 👏!

Back at the giant compost heap, the team again tried to guess that was in the compost based on it's pungent smell. Definitely not food waste according to Kymm and probably something leafy. Familiar faces appeared as Claire and Madhan took away a couple of wheelbarrows which the team filled up for them. Let's see what they grow with it at their Northfield allotments plots. Others came too with bin bags, shopping trolleys and one woman had come all the way from West Acton with a folding cart (and a car).

"I'd like some black gold please" - Woman with cart
"Well, we have around 2 tons of it. How much would you like?" - Sevan
"Oh, I'll take a ton" - Woman with cart

She had 10 bins bags, which didn't quite come to a metric ton. Still, she was really grateful for what she was able to wheel away to use in her garden. The team wrapped up at 12:30 having done a good shovelling shift, leaving the remaining heap to gardeners who'd brought their own spades and excited dogs, who'd find a new favourite digging spot.

As Storm Amy approached Ealing, a whirlwind of West London GoodGymers landed at Horsenden Farm. A strong team of seventeen hasn't been seen in Ealing for a long time. It took the joint forces of Ealing, Hounslow and Richmond to build a do-good brigade so large that it surprised even the task owner, Elsa, who scrambled to find more tasks for them.

We welcomed two new joiners, Bernadette and Tom, who chose to kick off their GoodGym adventure dangerously close to the Gruffalo Trail at Horsenden Hill. With such an impressive team, the chances of being eaten by a Gruffalo were close to zero. At the same time, the odds of having fun with good company while getting active in nature before eating carb-heavy, cheesy goodness from a local bakery were very high!

Our regulars from the Hounslow group runs had a chance to welcome back the unstoppable Lucy after the break she had to take in the last couple of weeks. Great to see you again, Lucy!

Two of the tasks given by Elsa had a lot to do with the mysterious disappearance of Horsenden pigs. The first assignment, taken by Steph Ducat, Iram, Kymm and Gus, was to transfer hay from the broken-down hay bales to the former pig quarters and spread it on the ground. I chose to believe it was to secure the traces of a pignapping crime until the arrival of the forensics team. Steph described the effort as hay-way to hell as the gusts of wind kept blowing the hay out of the wheelbarrows. Kymm reported there were as many techniques to spread the hay as GoodGymers: from gleeful tossing, through grumpy kicking to methodical arranging.

Sevan and Bernadette had a task of clearing weeds, mostly nettles, near the Horsenden Loaf pizza oven. Sevan shared that they were setting the stage for the hog roast the following day. That shed some light on the disappearance of the pigs - they must have escaped when they heard about the whole hog roast enterprise!

The largest squad undertook a mammoth job of clearing brambles to expand a meadow where the farm cows could graze to help establish a grassland with plenty of wildlife on the slope of Horsenden Hill. Gaby, Ariane, Tom, Mairaj, Maxime, Afshin, Thaiza, Lucy and Kash were chopping, lopping or slashing the blackberry invaders while Anita and Ash raked away the cuttings.

The cherry on a cake was that all the activity was observed through the lens of photographer Laura, who did a great job of not interrupting our tasks while capturing the spirit of GoodGym and the beauty of Horsenden Hill. We are hoping our part-time modelling gig today will help spread the word about GoodGym in the coming months. It will probably also disclose our soft spot for Horsenden pizza!

Inspired by today's task? Join the Horsenden session next month! Sign up now!

Racing celebrations, a huge task under the light of a beautiful moon, and a star turn from a rarely spotted inhabitant of Chiswick House made for a great Wednesday night at GoodGym Hounslow!

Thanks to Michelle for leading the warm up, before we kicked off the evening with a short run to our regular task. We were fresh off the back of some great races at the weekend - a huge well done to Chris, Tish, Matt, Eloise and Steph for a fantastic run at the Vitality 10km, and to Alan and Florian for smashing the Ealing Half!

We arrived at a secret door to meet Chiswick House gardener Chris, who took us to a new spot or the group - the bee hives. The bees produce honey which is sold in the shop to raise money for the charity, and they want to make the area more accessible for school kids. Enter GoodGym!

The aim of the game was to remove all the undergrowth and anything else that was getting in the way. Everything had to go to create a new pathway, and with the green flag from Chris to adopt a scorched earth policy, we got to work!

We pulled, lopped and cleared, slowly but surely revealing a large area of land. Half way through the task, our mystery guest made an appearance - well done to Ariane for safely uncovering and rehoming a gorgeous hedgehog! He was in very safe hands, and was soon happily snuffling his way back to the woods.

By the end the task the area was truly transformed, great work everybody. We ran and walked back to base, where there was the option of a static core workout using the benches by the rockery. We worked our obliques, lower back and abs with a series of (slightly damp) exercises.

Next week we're off to Harvard Hill for some more gardening - please bring headtorches if you have them as this is a dark task.

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!