SlabSavers

In a corner of a dark street, next to The Secret Slaboratory in South Acton, three GoodGymers stretching after a run were blinded by a bike light zigzagging with bravado towards them. It was no one else than Divya returning to GoodGym after his hibernation in the winter months!

Divya is the muscle and brains Ealing borrows from Hammersmith, and we were lucky to have him today at Jerome Allotments. The site has been already made partially inaccessible due to the commencing of building work. Romina from Cultivate London was hoping to salvage the paving slabs and reuse them at Popesfield Allotments. Some materials had been removed by GoodGym Hounslow and Ealing before, and some had been nicked before Cultivate managed to lift and transport them to the new home.

Tonight, we started where the slab-snatchers stopped. The six slabs were quite easily accessible, and we lifted and wheelbarrowed them outside the fencing, using a makeshift ramp to deal with a bump on the way. The next batch of slabs was not as simple to get to. They were surrounded by cobblestones we couldn't lever with spades.

"A sledgehammer could help here..." dreamt Sevan.

In the meantime, Romina had an alternative task: collecting the sand from under the slabs into bags. We switched to good, old-school shovelling, but some of us still had bigger ambitions.

"If we only had a sledgehammer..." - Sevan.

After some negotiation from Kash, Romina brought the favourite from Cultivate's tool shed:

The Mighty Sledgehammer.

While Steph and Kash worked on delivering the sand to the gate, Divya and Sevan formed a Research & Development Department to figure out how to get the cobblestones out of the way, generally, by smashing them. The innovative work brought fruits, and soon the trapped slabs were free to take. Once the GoodGymers figured out the right technique, there was no stopping them - apart from the timebox for the task!

Auberon from Cultivate joined the GoodGymers and Romina and used his formidable strength to transport the slabs through the gate faster. In an hour, the team rescued 20+ slabs and collected 7 bags of sand. That's a pretty impressive result for such a small group!

The slabs' story is not over! And you can become a part of it, even if you cannot lift. The idea of recycling the slabs is to reuse them at Popesfield Allotments, the new Cultivate site. To complete the end-to-end journey of the slabs, we will run in April to Popesfield to lay them down. Sign up now!

Next Tuesday, we are running to a location near Elthorne Park to mulch the fruit trees at community orchards maintained by HANGOT. Some of those GoodGymers helped plant this February. Sign up here for the next week's session!