Did we leave Joel in the Cemetery?

13 GoodGymers ran 6km and laid two new woodchip paths for Abney Park Cemetery !

With Joel away competing (watching) the IAAF Athletics in Stratford I was given the reins of the notorious GG Hackney, with a streak of 53 weeks in charge MR Smooth Running himself was sure to be missed. I tried to fill the gap and combat the sobbing by giving a cracking news update:

1. GG Monthly Social is tomorrow at the Southbank Rooftop Garden, pray for sun! 6.30pm until late - be there!
2. Only two people had listened to Ivo's inspiring BBC Radio 4 interview, it's awesome and only 12 minutes - listen and share amongst your friends.

After our introductions and welcoming Stephen whose first time it was at GG, we headed north by north-east to the far reaches of Hackney to Abney Park Cemetery, this was a lovely 3km run where I only got lost for 8 seconds (not bad...)

Congrats Tom!

We met Tom our contact at Abney, who's just had a new baby girl - surprising what can happen between a monthly task. He explained that our task was to rake and shovel an old woodchip path AND to collect fresh woodchip from one of the BIG piles to create two NEW paths to link up a central loop near the Chapel.

Splitting into two groups, armed with 6 rakes, 12 shovels and 12 wheelbarrows we got to work! Pete was loving pacing it around the park with his wheelbarrow, Phil was displaying his shovelling technique and everyone was working hard for the full 30 minutes.

13 runners + 30 mins = 2 new paths

Stephen did a cracking job of raking the new paths and directing wheelbarrow traffic, great first task dude! Once the paths were completed we collected at The Chapel where Tom gave us a quick history lesson about the non-denominational chapel established in 1840, how it went into disrepair post-WW2 and the reconstruction that's taken place and planned for the future. All sounds very exciting, although a bit creepy ha.

Heading South

We said our goodbyes to Tom and headed back to London Fields, I could tell everyone was very disappointed that we didn't have time for glutes conditioning exercises ALAS! We had a good stretch to lengthen our muscle fibres, very important guys!

Cheers for having me GGH. Sign up next week here, there's a good-doing and a social :)

PB out.