Shovel Tuesday

After last week's Valentine's task, this Tuesday Elthorne Park hosted Mardi Gras for GoodGym Ealing. Were the 9 GoodGymers spending the night devouring pancakes? Definitely not - at least not yet!

We met at the top of Trumpers Way and welcomed a new GoodGymer Nishy who knew that a wheelbarrow workout would work better tonight than the zumba class! We strolled down to the entrance of Elthorne Park where new our task awaited: mulching the hedge at the top of the hill. Chris started the music, headtorches went into flashing mode and the rave was on!

We broke into the container and secured all three wheelbarrows, all the shovels and a couple of rakes. On our first reconnaissance walk in search for the hedge in need of mulching, we discovered that the path to the destination leads uphill, is populated by rabbits and filled with traps! We dealt with barbed wire, took down a few brambles and entered Hanwell's Area 52 where we found the highly secured hedge and collected several beer bottles. We sent those for further investigation by throwing them in the secret postbox masked as a waste bin.

The woodchip pile where Jenni and Chris loaded the barrows was at the bottom of the hilly area, so Madhan and Kash had a good workout pushing their full wheelbarrows up - they even had a little race on their last run uphill! At the top, Ben and Sevan were in charge of distributing the mulch at the base of the hedge. Because there were three wheelbarrows, the third one was getting very popular and made friends with more than one human. Mike and Milly used it, swapping their jobs between filling the barrow with woodchip and pushing the load up. Nishy had several rides with the wheelbarrow up and down before permanently joining the mulching team up the hill.

In less than an hour the tools were returned and the base of the hedge was embellished with fresh woodchip that will help the young trees retain moisture and fight off weeds. After two weeks in a row in nature at Elthorne Park, next Tuesday we will be running to urban areas of Acton and spreading the word about Reduce and Recycle Hub. Sign up for the next group run here.