We kicked things off with our usual warm-up before heading out for an evening of community action, great company and a lower body blast!

A big welcome to Sean, and Andrew who joined us for their very first GoodGym session. Hope you will be back for more soon! 👋

🍁 Leaf it to GoodGym!

Our main mission of the evening took us to St Mary's Church, where we got stuck into clearing the churchyard of fallen leaves.

The aim? To get the area ready for the planting of 1,000 daffodil bulbs in a couple of weeks' time 🌼

Clearing the leaves does much more than make the churchyard look tidy. A thick layer can prevent other plants from thriving, create trip hazards and provide valuable material for making mulch to support next year's growing.

The team worked together, raking, gathering and bagging up the leaves, collecting over 20 bags in total! That's a whole lot of leaves - which won't go to waste. They're being transported to a local community garden in Doddington, where volunteers can put them to good use on their growing beds. 🌱

There were plenty of extra treats along the way, too, including mini tours of the church, snacks and sweets to keep everyone fuelled, and a gorgeous view of the river to enjoy while we worked.

🏃 Time to get those legs moving!

With the leaves cleared and the hard work done, we headed just around the corner for a leg-focussed fitness session. It was a proper workout for all those lower-body muscles, and everyone put in a seriously impressive effort.

📅 What's coming up next?

There's lots more GoodGym on the horizon:

This Thursday: We're heading to Roehampton to help create a community growing space

Next week: We're mixing things up with a slightly unusual session. There's no run this time, but we'll be doing a positive task supporting a hub for people experiencing homelessness, followed by a Halloween social. More details here

A big thank you to everyone who came along, for bringing such brilliant energy and making a real difference.

We were back at Chiswick House last night for another lovely GoodGym Hounslow session, and what a treat we had in store: two tasks, both indoors! It was especially good timing with the evenings drawing in.

Chiswick House is a wonderful local resource and the team keep our green spaces thriving, protect their heritage and make them welcoming places for the whole community to enjoy. By helping with the behind-the-scenes jobs, we’re doing our bit to support a special place for local people.

We met up with Poppy and split into two teams to tackle our tasks for the evening.

🌱 Team Seeds

Half the group headed inside to sort through seeds collected from the garden and carefully pack them into pouches. These seeds will either be resown to help grow more beautiful plants or sold to raise funds for the charity. It was peaceful, chatty work, with plenty of time to catch up and discuss everything from the Pope to our upcoming birthday! Proof that chatting while GGing throws up some of the most interesting conversational topics.

🌿 Team Willow

Meanwhile, over in the barn, the other team got busy stripping willow branches before carefully manoeuvring them into arches. These will be planted to support the flowers in the herbaceous borders, helping them grow securely.

This task took a fair bit of skill and dexterity, but GoodGym Hounslow were more than up to the challenge! There were expert demonstrations of willow stripping, along with a spot of country dancing - anyone else remember the Stripping the Willow formation?

It was a thoroughly wholesome and productive evening, with plenty achieved and lots of good company along the way.

🏃 We rounded off the evening with a run back to base, breaking it up with a variety of fitness stations. A little extra exercise to finish off a brilliant session — and some very impressive pictures to prove it!

Next week: We’re heading to Duke’s Meadow to clear a space for young people. Another great opportunity to give something back to our local community, get moving and have a good chat along the way.

See you there, GoodGym Hounslow! ❤️

Last night, Khai and I set off on a run down to St Andrew’s Youth Club in Victoria, dodging the wall of cyclists at Hyde Park along the way and chatting about Khai’s recent success in the Big Half!

We arrived to meet Adrian, who had a mission for us: to tackle the garage and make it a more accessible, organised and welcoming space. No problem! We rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in.

We started by sorting out the glasses before being joined by Brenda, who helped us get the space into much better shape. There were heavy tables to move, scooters to reorganise, and super soakers to investigate (we’re still not entirely sure how those work!). We shuffled things around, negotiated some new storage arrangements and generally had a great time turning garage chaos into something a little more orderly.

And then there was the fridge. 🤢 A particularly grim-looking specimen needed relocating to the bins for collection, giving us an extra challenge to add to our evening of garage gymnastics. Nothing says community spirit quite like hauling a questionable fridge out of the way!

There were a few other discoveries along the way, including a Scottish-themed table. We also had to tactfully distract Brenda from the football banner for the wrong team hanging on the wall. Sorry, Brenda! ⚽️

With the hard work done, we gave Adrian a tour of the transformed space. He was delighted to see the difference we’d made, and we shared a few more ideas about how the garage could become even more organised and accessible.

It was brilliant to see such a visible change in one evening, and lovely to work alongside Adrian and Brenda to make the space more useful for everyone.

Watch this space for the next instalment of the great garage reorganisation! 👀