We didn’t leaf a lot to be desired

Leaves, leaves, leaves. They're everywhere at the moment, great, wet, heavy piles of leaves over pavements and parks, gardens and greens. Difficult to walk and run on safely, they are slippery and stop the grass and other plants and flowers from growing underneath them. Something had to be done! This was especially true at Christchurch gardens, where the Friends group were finding it hard to keep on top of the issue in their community gardens.

So that's why 11 GoodGymers found themselves running down to Battersea on a chilly November evening with gloves and headtorches at the ready to lend a hand. This lovely garden had a bit of an issue with antisocial behaviour in the past, so a group of local people came together to help create a happy, harmonious, welcoming space for everybody to enjoy.

After taking a guess on how many bags of leaves we would collect through the night - answers ranged from early 20s right up to 50 - we arrived to find Nigel greeting us with black sacks and a (limited) number of tools. Not to be put off, we got to work straight away, with Jo remembering to point out that we should be watching out for hedgehogs and other little critters who might be hiding away. We soon realised that with 30 bags available between us we already had an answer to our earlier poll, and as Dylan said, anybody who guessed over 30 was a winner. However, Caroline was definitely closest with her estimate of 32 - so well done!

After half an hour of hard work the place was looking a lot clearer, so we admired the huge pile we had created (check out the pics!), resisted the urge to jump into it headfirst, and made our way over to the park to do our fitness session.

Last night we focussed on three main muscle groups - core, legs and glutes, and arms. There were four sets of reps for each group of 45 seconds each, giving those muscles some good conditioning. Well done everybody!

Some dates to remember: our end of year Christmas party promises to be a Christmas cracker so don't forget to sign up!

We have a Saturday mission to help create a garden at a school near Tooting which needs as much help as possible. There has been some talk about doing Tooting parkrun followed by coffee/breakfast together beforehand so it should be a fun one!

There will be a community mission on the evening of the 18th December to help pack Christmas boxes for vulnerable people. I'm just waiting on conformation of timings to list it, but it should be a festive but also beneficial task , so watch this space!