Monday at Bixley Al-LOCK-ments

All we need are samosas and tools. - Sevan

Thanks to the King's coronation, this Bank Holiday Monday GoodGym Ealing gained additional time for their strength workouts. An opportunity was given by Mani from Southall Transition who invited us to Bixley Field Allotments - a place that had been set up for the community to grow food locally.

Sevan who volunteered to lead the run to Bixley, ran to the task almost 10 km in total! Madhan and Kash met at Momentum coffee shop in Hanwell and set off for a walk along the canal. Milly also walked to the task. Each time a new person arrived at Bixley, they had to solve the puzzle of how to open the allotment gate which looked locked but actually wasn't!

Today's task was to attack a small jungle that spread across the vegetable plots in spring. Grass, dandelions and other invaders had taken over the place and had to be dug out. It wasn't your usual gentle weeding exercise, oh no... It was powering through with mattocks and spades, shifting the soil around without mercy. While Madhan, Sevan and Kash chose the grass-hacking job, Mani and Milly took a bit more precise task to weed around raspberry bushes and then turn the soil with a fork at a different veg patch.

At some point, Mani had to leave the team for a while and cycle to complete his mission of utmost importance: deliver fresh, hot samosas to hungry GoodGymers! Towards the end of the session, all five treated themselves to delicious snacks and water.

We got lucky today missing most of the forecasted rain. A few droplets here and there weren't enough to make us stop the work! We were digging the fresh samosas so much that Mani convinced us to plan a come back to Bixley very soon.