St Patrick’s Day gave us the perfect excuse for a festive GoodGym outing — and this week came with an extra celebration: Nick’s birthday. We gathered at Freaks & Geeks, wished him a very happy St Patnick’s Day, and set off towards The Greenway Orchard with a strong crew and even stronger energy.

The 4km run took us into the dusk, head torches flicking on as we approached the Orchard. Waiting for us: tools, gloves, and a meadow that had long since stopped behaving like a meadow. Our mission was to help clear the overgrowth so the Orchard team can sow new seeds and bring the space back to life.

Tackling the Meadow (and the Meadow Tackling Us) The brambles were particularly scratchy — the kind that seem to reach out and grab you even when you’re sure you’re nowhere near them. But the team got stuck in: - Cutting back thick tangles of bramble and long grass. - Pulling up stubborn roots that did not want to leave. - Using head torches to illuminate the darkest corners, where the brambles were definitely plotting. Despite the scratch factor, the transformation was clear by the end. What started as an impenetrable thicket now looked like a space with real potential again.

A Birthday Bramble Blow‑Out In honour of the occasion, Nick celebrated by blowing out… well, not candles, but a satisfying number of brambles. Not quite as glamorous, but arguably more useful — and definitely more GoodGym.

Wrapping Up We snapped a group photo, jogged back to Freaks & Geeks, and rounded off the evening with a well‑earned St Patrick’s Day drink and chips. A perfect blend of doing good, running well, and celebrating St Patnick in style. Had some really nice feedback from the task afterwards too, to cap it all off - well done all.

Shout‑outs - To Nick, birthday hero and bramble‑vanquisher. - To everyone who braved the scratchiest vegetation we’ve faced in a while. - To the whole team for bringing such great energy to a brand‑new task.

A brill evening all round

With no task lined up for the evening, we instead headed out for a social 5k jog around the Olympic Park. What a place to stretch the legs – we're always grateful to have such an inspiring backdrop on our doorstep.

A big welcome to Rue, top Tower Hamlets GoodGymmer and legend of London Fields junior parkrun. GoodGymmers help out at this event pretty much every Sunday, and if you’re lucky enough to be there when Rue is RD, it’s worth it just to witness his Hackney Haka – a life-affirming experience and a warm-up routine.

Also great to see Rosie back again. This usually happens when she’s training for something big… and it’s no different this time – the London Landmarks Half!

It was a pretty simple evening really, much like many of our Tuesday evening gatherings that usually follow the classic “little jog out, help a bit, little jog back” format. But of course it adds up to much more than that – building connections with our community and with each other until the collective becomes something genuinely important to us.

Which made it especially lovely to hear that top Newham GoodGymmers and all-round wonderful humans Rosa and Graham got engaged last week. Their numerous tasks together chronicled through our run reports, what a joy it’s been to watch their story unfold. Their relationship has been forged through weeding, digging, mulch-moving, sanding, painting, furniture shifting, donations sorting, vaccine centre operations, parkrunning, marathon running, and much, much more. A true GoodGym love story. We love you both!

Just a thought – could you set the wedding up as a community mission? Would help us fill a Saturday slot.

Sign up next week for more of the same - well, maybe not another engagement announcement, but a run, a good deed and a celebratory drink if you missed it this week!

A return visit to our favourite storage facility this evening for Hilary, Eugene, Adam, Fuad, Lise and Nick to do some more clothes sorting for the Care4Calais team, with clear instructions this week to sort out children’s clothing by specific ages so that the Care4Calais team could do a distribution during March.

Having learned a few lessons from our previous visit, including how to actually get into the facility and navigate the maze of storage to find the relevant lock up room, and to bring a couple of marker pens...we were able to get sorting pretty quickly this week, with empty boxes marked for the different age categories, and piles of donated items put into the corridors for the teams to go through and sort per the instructions from the team.

To the sound of a random playlist of 90’s/00’s tunes feeding through the facility’s speaker system, and our ongoing admiration for any clothing items made in Bangladesh to keep Fuad happy, plus the now familiar entertaining collection of somewhat unusual donated items (there was a whole dressing up box of items that we (mostly) resisted delving into), we soon had a “production line” going and filled 6 boxes, each marked with a different age category, by the end of the evening. There is still much to do, so another visit surely beckons before too long.

Seven GoodGymmers set out today to wage war on one of the less glamorous foes of East London: rubbish. And wow… there was a lot of it.

The Journey

A few of us kicked things off with a run from the London Aquatics Centre, warming up nicely before the main event. The air at the Aquatics Centre: fresh. The air under the bridge between Drapers Fields and Chobham Manor School: not so much.

The Task

The area around the bridge turned out to be extremely heavily littered — the kind of spot where you look around and instantly know:

“Yes, this is why GoodGym exists.”

Broken glass? tick

Mystery smells? tick

Random items that really shouldn’t be outdoors? tick

Enough rubbish to fill the Olympic pool? Maybe not, but we did manage to fill around 20 bags, which isn’t bad for a Saturday mission.

The Team

All seven of us got stuck in, spreading out across the site like a well‑coordinated litter‑picking strike force. The teamwork was top tier — grabbers grabbing, bags filling, jokes flying.

The Impact

By the end, the path looked cleaner, safer, and significantly less like a post‑festival campsite. It was one of those tasks where the difference was instantly noticeable — exactly the kind of satisfying GoodGym magic that reminds you why we do this.

...definitely helped with today's delivery of two bags of medicine for the always grateful Miss S.

A classic flat-pack mission today: helping Ms V assemble some under-bed drawers so that family are more easily able to visit her. A straightforward task on paper, though any seasoned GoodGymmer knows that furniture assembly has a habit of introducing plot twists just when you’re feeling confident.

Happily, Nick and I were spared any dramatic turns. All parts present, instructions broadly logical, and within the hour the completed drawers were sliding neatly into place under the bed without even a spare screw in sight.

Ms V’s home is no stranger to flat-pack arrivals — and as we gathered the packaging for recycling, we couldn’t help but notice there’s still space on the other side of the bed for another set of drawers. So the possibility of a further sequel remains…

For now though, mission accomplished — and a home made more welcoming.