Where there's a Willow there's a Way(ow)

On such a summery evening it felt all wrong to meet inside, so we took our rendez-vous point outside the East Oxford Community Centre and soaked up some early summer sunshine. Chatter about upcoming running plans brought us to talking about Love Trails Festival in Wales in July (looks really fun!) and the Two Tunnels Races and Summer Party which one or two of us Oxford Goodgymers are already signed up for.

Welcoming Guilia, Linden, Sophie, and Talitha to their first Goodgym run (give them a cheer!), we set off on the 1 mile run to Flo's - The Place in the Park through the back streets of Cowley.

Flo's is a great community hub in East Oxford with loads going on even though it is a relatively new addition to the area. For most of us this was our first visit to Flo's - The place in the Park, so our task owner Makena explained a bit about the place; the building was taken over by the community after the Oxford children's centres were closed in 2016, and it opened as a community hub in October 2018. It now houses a nursery, the community midwives, and a cafe, and will shortly be hosting a Refill Shop too.

Flo's is surrounded by metal railings, and our task for the evening was to make these look a bit friendlier and prettier by weaving strands of willow through them.

Checking out some examples of other willow fences in the garden spaces and collecting up our pre-soaked willow branches we channeled our inner artists and got to work. This is the kind of task that would take 1 person a really long time to do, but with 13 motivated Goodgymers you can achieve a surprising amount of willow-weaving in 40 minutes or so! Not wishing to completely block the view into Flo's charming garden space, we decided that 2 lines of willow weaving were the best way to prettify the metal railings. Persuading the tougher willow branches through the railings was a surprisingly good arm workout, and I'd like to think that tiptoeing past wildflowers, fennel, and asparagus spears helped us improve our agility. We may not have achieved something as impressive as this, but give us a couple of weeks to practice and maybe we'll get there!

Incidentally, our previous visit to Flo's has been featured as one of the example photos on the Oxford Green Week photo competition website - we are the example for Health and Happiness.

Once we'd used up all the willow we said our goodbyes, and with all of the lovely Florence Park to play in it would have been criminal not to use the area for our fitness session. Everyone paired up with a certain trepidation for a game of meet & retreat: dashing in opposite directions around our chosen patch of grass, high 5-ing when you meet your partner coming the other way, and then racing back to the starting point. Who can get back to the base first?! This definitely brought out everyone's competitive instinct! As a recovery break it was straight into 30 seconds of partner-planking. Then repeat. Twice.

Good things come in 3s you know...

As most impressive planker Tim was awarded the Garland of Joy to wear on the run back to base, rocking the florals all the way down the Iffley Road (Roger Bannister would be proud).

Same time next week?