A mild June evening saw 13 GoodGymers gather at Tower Hamlets Community Transport in Limehouse.

It’s coming up to a year since we first visited Kamal here, the new home of Ocean Youth Connexions admin and training operations.

Since then we’ve weeded the wall multiple times, cleared soil, raked zillions of leaves, picked litter, emptied barrows full of greenery and done our fair share of painting.

A popular task (due to the location, well organised activity, great before and after pics and the organisations we’re supporting), this Monday night activity is always well attended, so we were able to form multiple teams again tonight to:

• Pull large areas of weeds away from walls and fences.

• Clear small weeds away from the areas of the yard.

• Dispose of the greenery in the outside park area.

• Pick litter.

• Paint gold drainpipes!

It was a fab team effort, with GoodGymers joining forces to rake piles, blitz troublesome weedy areas and climb ladders to reach high painting spots.

The time as usual flew by, and it seemed like we'd only just started before the group were gathering for the final photo and congratulating Lucinda on her 50th good deed! John presented Lucinda with her very own black t-shirt before they both posed for the obligatory pic. Congratulations, Lucinda - you're such a big part of Tower Hamlets GoodGym!

Thanks to John and Chris for pics and project management tonight.

Join the team for a fun get together in Bethnal Green this Friday at Mother Kelly's, while next week, we're back to Meath Gardens for our first visit of 2025!

Until then...

The gorgeous Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park covers 27 acres and is home to a wide range of wildlife and plants.

Volunteers offer support to Park Manager Ken and his team to help manage the site, including the maintenance of its many pathways.

16 GoodGymers gathered this evening to help remove cow parsley from one of the pathways.

We welcomed Jasand Carina to their first Monday night task before Ken greeted us with a short briefing, tonight's pun and some good guidance on the task ahead...

Why cow parsley?

Cow parsley can spread rapidly and dominate open spaces, overshadowing smaller plants. Managing its spread helps keep a balanced and varied landscape.

The team spent a productive hour in the overgrowth, performing many squats to carefully uproot the stems, and taking it in turns to wheel loads around the corner to the green waste pile, before hurling armfuls of greenery onto this great big green mountain.

By the end of the evening, pathway clearings were more visible (see Emma’s before and after pics) showing immediate results of tonight’s effort.

It was gone 8 when we gathered gloves, forks and wheelbarrows and headed to the nearest bench for our final group pic! Ambling back through the park, we concluded it was something of a relief to enjoy a task in the daylight, complete with warm sun.

Until next time.

The Goodgym team secured the cool jobs for the afternoon as they took to the fridge to sort and separate items by 'Use By' and 'Best Before' dates. You'll be pleased to know that the only icebergs they faced were lettuces and all were happily sorted into mixed crates to be distributed across London.

The Felix Depot fridge hosted East London's answer to Spain's La Tomatina Festival as Aida, Asad and Kat sorted through crates of Rotten Tomatoes - but it was 100% reviews all round when the Ocado produce arrived to be sorted!

There wasn't mush-room to manoeuvre, so Aida got a taste of what it means to drive in East London, as she took to the pump trucks expertly shifting pallets around the warehouse to make space. Meanwhile, Asad did a brie-lliant job taking charge of the chilled dairy, meat and poultry and Kat slowed her roll, to inspect the bread and baked goods, and make sure there was a fair share of products across the crates.

Another successful afternoon at the coolest depot in town!

We met from this task outside the Asda supermarket, which was handy as it gave Asad and Kat the chance to grab a late breakfast to fortify themselves for the task ahead.

We were also joined by new-boy Yagiz, who lives a short walk away, doing his first ever Good Deed. Welcome Yagiz, see you again soon! We made our way to the night shelter, which has worked with the local community to provide support to people experiencing homelessness for over 25 years.

They provide emergency shelter and hot meals with structured individual plans to assist guests to move into longer term accommodation.

However, some areas of the shelter were starting to look a bit shabby, and the fearless foursome soon got to work with stepladders, rags to protect the carpets, and plenty of white paint.

We wanted to finish the job, so spent an extra half an hour over our allotted time to make sure the ceiling of two rooms, the door to another and that difficult bit above the door, were all covered in a shiny new coat of paint.

For the first time ever, I completed a painting task without a trace of paint on my clothes! But Kat walked away with plenty of souvenir white splashes on her shirt...