Weed between the lines

Another beautiful Monday night saw a small-but-dedicated group of GoodGymers heading to the pretty, well-tended gardens of St Leonard's Priory Park this evening.

Starting with some lower body work around the useful vegetable planters, we sped through a short fitness session, concluding with some time-honoured stretches using the beautiful trees as props.

Welcoming the final couple of additions to tonight's group, Larry our task owner proceeded to show us the area we'd be focusing on tonight: the soon-to-be fern glade area. A shaded area of the park, on a previous visit to the park we'd laid the woodchip in this area, but following a damp summer, weeds have grown tall and the woodchip concealed. Working steadily, filling large bags with weeds, we made our way around the area, tackling a variety of weeds, some definitely more stubborn than others.

It was a nice little upper body workout as it turned out (grabbing a weed by the root works the rear delts nicely), not to mention the perfect opportunity for a squat or two.

As 8pm came and went, and the sun proceeded to set, we decided one final blitz of a large tree area would be the perfect end to a productive night.

As we gathered the last fork, and Chris emptied the last weed bag into the compost, we concluded it had been an enjoyable, productive companionable evening.

We return to the Park next month, for some more garden-clearing.

In the meantime, coming up:

• Our new September series of sessions with Bethnal Green Foodbank!

• Pilates in the Park next Wednesday!

Until then.