Christmas is over, the quality street has been eaten and we’ve had the countdown into the new year.

Goodbye twenty twenty tree… 2024 is officially here, as is the GoodGym January challenge! What better way to start the year than with a good deed? The two Johnny’s and Lucy agreed, and were pining to go good and get fit!

A classic Hammersmith and Fulham task, the aim was to scour the local streets for discarded Christmas trees and bring them back to Loris Gardens, where there is a tree recycling collection point. Trees left in the roads and on streets can cause problems for cars and pedestrians, especially with storm Henk blowing around!

Although it was quite early on in the twelve days of Christmas for trees to come down, we found enough trees on the roads around Brook Green to keep us busy.

There were a few different techniques utilised for tree moving… - The ‘husky’, in which the GoodGymmer pulls the tree along by its tip akin to a dog pulling a sleigh. - The ‘macho man’, demonstrated by a GoodGymmer showing off their brute strength by carrying a large tree balanced across their shoulders, often with a squat or two thrown in for good measure. - The ‘panto horse’, where two GoodGymmers take on one tree at the front and back and shuffle along akin to the pantomime classic.

A tree-mendous effort later, there were no more firs on the streets, and we galavanted off into the wind, with the first tally on the January Challenge notched off.