Picking up the trail for Earth Hour!

A gloriously warm Saturday day led into a beautifully mild Saturday night and 9 of us met to trail run by headtorch and complete a litter pick as part of this years Earth Hour!

In Ealing we are extremely lucky to have Horsenden Hill, a lovely open space packed with great trails and views in all directions across London. Unfortunately sometimes people reach the summit and leave litter behind so as part of this years Earth Hour we decided to take the opportunity to run here and address the problem! A few of us have run here before but never at night so it was wonderful to meet as a group and experience the area in a completely different way.

We stayed as a group, lighting the way with bobbing headtorches weaving through the trails until we reached the top where we rewarded with (slightly darker than normal, thanks to Earth Hour!) views across London. There we stopped to pick any litter we could find, which thankfully wasn't a lot! It's great to see that people are actually using the bins provided to dispose of their litter and we only found one bad spot which we quickly cleared up. Lots of cigarette butts were scooped up along with excavating a few partially buried bottle caps which was very satisfying!

Hot on the trail!

After we'd picked all we could find we took some time to just enjoy running a few of the different trails over, up and down the hill in all different directions! Most of us were so warm we were down to just shorts and t-shirts, which whilst is enjoyable is very unusual for this time of year. It really brings home the message Earth Hour is giving about the effects of global warming.

We finished our run on the Gruffalo trail (how could we not!) and then ended the evening the way we like best, in the pub! It was great to chat with all the GoodGymers who'd come from different areas of London to take part and also get to know Sophie who joined us tonight for her first ever GoodGym run!

I'm hoping to arrange more events like this in the future so keep your eyes peeled!