GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM

On a beautiful spring night, six of GoodGym Redbridge’s finest runners took advantage of the extra light to head to Wanstead Community Allotments and ran 6.2km in the process.

What a difference an hour makes. With the clocks going forward last weekend, our runs will now start in the daylight and that means some tasks that we attended last year will once again be available to us.

One of our big projects in 2016 was Wanstead Community Allotments off Nutter Lane. We toiled and sweated over this patch of green over many months, transforming it from a jungle of waist high weeds to a more manicured vegetable patch.

While there has been the odd Saturday Starter session over at the allotment, this was the first real opportunity to head over and see what the winter months had done to the place. The good news was that work had been done by Vision Redbridge over the past three months and the garden was in pretty good shape – certainly compared with this time last year.

So with the beds weed free and reading for planting, it was down to the group to weed the pathways and attempt to remove some of the giant weeds at the unkempt far end of the allotment. Armed with hoes, trowels a wheel barrow the team set to work battling the giant weeds with roots that seem to head to the centre of the earth.

With 40 minutes on the clock the best of the light had gone, so after a quick tidy up it was time to head out on to the local streets to work on fitness. This week the group were particularly spritely and the typical 5km training route was covered in a fast time. Nice work team, the training is paying off.

We will be back at the allotments in the coming months so if you missed this one check out the events page for a future edition. Next week we head out on to the streets to spread the word about the Forest Recycling Project and how community organisations and charities can get paint for reduced prices – and we can put it on the walls. You can sign up for this run and task here