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.

When the clocks go back in October, who would say no to that extra hour in bed on Sunday morning?

GoodGymers!

Five of them have beaten the autumn-winter sloth and showed up bright and early in Northfields to help Kathy and her colleagues from Ealing Transition Beeshare tame the rampant ivy and brambles in the Walmer Gardens orchard.

I can honestly say that GoodGym is threatening to disrupt my normal weekend lie-in habits - Max.

Turning into an early bird wasn't the only risk at this morning's session. As the orchard served as the location for the bee co-op's hives, we couldn't be 100% sure that no one would get stung. Kathy showed us a dividing point (an old apple tree) beyond which there was no guarantee that the bees would accept our operations. At the end of the session, it turned out that the pollinators must have been pleased with our presence or hadn't got their coffee shot yet (despite Steph inadvertently leaving his cup around them). No bee stings reported!

The Beeshare team had been working on clearing the space of brambles earlier on and had left some old cuttings, which Max offered to collect and drop at the back of the orchard. Deepak and Sevan volunteered to free the fruit trees at the garden entrance from ivy and brambles. Steph Ducat and Kash chose to cut the blackberry shoots around the big apple tree marking the border of the hive territory. In the process, they stomped on numerous uncollected fallen apples - squish, squish! - and, luckily, didn't stomp on two frogs - ribbit, ribbit! - hiding in the brambles. Steph, to keep the amphibians safe, moved them closer to the pond. At least that's what he told Kash. Should she have trusted the French guy to deal with frogs?

Ninety minutes of productive lopping, pulling and wheelbarrowing left the orchard transformed and ready for the winter break. Four GoodGymers decided it wasn't enough goodgymming for the day and jogged to Walpole Park for their second task that morning.

In October 1985, Marty McFly jumped into Doc Brown's DeLorean and travelled 40 years into the future. He jumped not only in time, but in space too. Marty found himself in 2025 London, although it didn't look like London at all. Grassy meadows, pine trees, blue skies, uninterrupted by unsightly skyscrapers. But there was something else...

Instead of flying hoverboards, so ubiquitous in 2015, the meadow was full of fly-tipped boards - parts of beds, drawers, cupboards. If Marty went back to 2023, he'd have seen that volunteers from Friends of Grove Farm, LAGER Can, and GoodGym have cleared the fly-tipped bulky rubbish from the Ealing Northern meadow. Now the flytips were back!

GoodGymers Max, Sevan and Kash joined a group of Friends of Grove Farm for the usual monthly conservation day, but the need to keep the place clear of rubbish was more pressing. Mike, the lead of Friends of Grove Farm, gave the team a choice of two projects: picking up small litter or removing bulky trash: pieces of furniture, pipes, buckets, barbecues, mowers. The team decided to tackle the large-scale rubbish and cleared two big patches of flytips.

After the initial shock, Marty McFly was so inspired that he travelled in time to the next Grove Farm conservation day in November 2025. There is still time to sign up for those who don't have a DeLorean time machine. We are hoping to see you and Marty there!