Halloween 2023 brought another instalment of last year's popular task: spookifying the Northfield Allotment! The oldest allotments in Ealing were setting up their favoured Halloween family event - the Halloween Pumpkin Trail! GoodGym Ealing offered help decorating part of the spooky trail: putting up lights and pumpkins on Radbourne Walk!

Sevan and Kash were first to arrive, running a short distance to get to the allotment, where they met the task owner, Clare. They stood in the middle of the path, getting the brief, oblivious to the passers-by.

'Careful, a bike!' said Sevan.
'That's one of ours!' Kash noticed.
'Oh, that's Penny!'

Penny cycled to the community mission, just like Luis who came soon after her. Christos arrived running, and Michelle and Caroline even fitted the Gunnersbury parkrun into their pre-task routine.

The Steel Curtain

The access to the allotments was restricted by a metal fence. Only the holders of the keys had the freedom to go in and out. Clare abolished the unfair system and bestowed one of the keys upon Kash so the goodgymming class could enter the site.

Orange is the new blaze

The first task was to distribute 50 carved pumpkins along Radbourne Walk, the path running alongside the allotments. The requirements were as follows:

• 50 pumpkins need to cover the whole path
• pumpkins should be facing North
• two light-up tea lights go into each pumpkin
• the pumpkins should be put in places where they look cool

After letting all GoodGymers behind the fence, Clare revealed a group of carved pumpkins hidden under a tarpaulin. She gave us wheelbarrows and battery-powered tea lights. Soon, we faced those few small challenges that made all the fun!

Propaganda art

One pumpkin didn't have a face, so Michelle stepped in to massacre (I mean: decorate!) it. Her piece was a brutalist art manifesto, capturing GoodGym's sense of community, equality, simplicity and strength.

Switching factions

After the Steel Curtain was abolished and the pumpkins had the freedom to go out of the allotment, they evenly distributed themselves on both sides of Radbourne Walk. When a strimmer operator was cutting the overgrowth on the left side of Radbourne Walk, all the pumpkins suddenly decided to move right. After the radical Strimmer Reform and abolishing the reign of nettles, we convinced some pumpkins to return to the left and restore the balance of power.

Wealth redistribution

We discovered there were not enough working tea lights for all the pumpkins. We had to appoint two tax collectors to find the pumpkins who had accumulated all two lamps and collected a whopping 50% tax. Luis and Christos then gave a tea light to the poor pumpkins that didn't have a single lamp in them.

All strings attached

When Rohan joined us, we started the final task: putting up ropes with lights and spooky decorations across Radbourne Walk. We were at an advantage this time as the allotment crew had already assembled the strings. All we had to do was switch on the lights and fix the cables to hooks on one side of the path and trees or the fence on the other. We had plenty of hands to do that and a step ladder (however, Clare was very happy when she heard earlier that The tall guy from last year would come to the task. At some point, Kash and Sevan had to run East for their next mission, so there was a change of command. Caz, who got the keys and the hotline to Clare now, led the group, making sure all strings were in place for the event.

How strong is a piece of string?

After dusk, Sevan and Kash returned to Northfield Allotment to inspect whether the decorative strings held up till evening and whether every pumpkin on Radbourne Walk was glowing well with a single light in. As other GoodGymers, they got free entry to the event. The code word GoodGym, didn't seem to work at the entrance but the name Clare did the trick. The visiting GoodGymers could see all the effort their team and allotments' volunteers had put into the event. If Sevan and Kash were not terrified by the skeletons on the trail, they got a bit scared of the pouring rain that just started. Nevertheless, the event has gone well. When they encountered Clare, she mentioned 3000 visitors popping into the Pumpkin Trail so far.

What a great team of GoodGymers we have in Ealing - good sports, fun and not afraid to stand up in front of the runners about to take on the Ealing Half Marathon! Let the images speak for themselves...

As the September equinox is approaching this week, the days noticeably shrunk, and we officially entered the headtorch season for group runs! We still hit a double-digit number of attendees tonight, thanks to glorious comebacks from Caroline and Cristina 🎉

This Tuesday we came back to Cultivate's new plant nursery at Popesfield Allotments. The trees, shrubs and Herbaceous perennials were still on the pallets where we transported them last month. But would they stay there for long?

No spoilers!

When the runners: Caroline, Cristina, Kash, with backmarkers: Sevan and Steph Ducat arrived at the site, they found the task owner Romina and the GoodGymers: Mike, Madhan and Milly already working the shovels and wheelbarrows to move the gravel from the front gate to the space in front of Cultivate's shed. With more reinforcements arriving (Divya on his bike and Chris running individually), the team was split into two.

People who had been made redundant on the gravel job sought new opportunities on a different project. The next day, another volunteer group was supposed to replace a large membrane covering the ground with... even larger one! There was a problem: the membrane was covered in pallets that, in turn, were covered in plant pots. You know where am I going with this, right? Relocating the plant pots take two! And by plants I don't mean a tiny fern or a little, cute shrub. We are talking trees - the heavy, unwieldy sort - a perfect challenge for us.

Good news! No one lost any eyes when manipulating trees

When the gravel, trees in pots and pallets moved their places, Romina realised that it was difficult to continue working in the darkness and asked us whether we had time for another task. We got our head torches out and were ready to migrate more stuff. This time it would be dried grass from a pile of soil, branches and hay. We surrounded the stack like vultures and loaded the wheelbarrows with hay. We thought that only the dried grass was what Romina was after. Only after she explained the purpose of moving that material, we understood the idea: a bonfire! Anything burnable, not just grass, would go on the new stack 🔥 We transported branches and planks found in the pile to their (final) destination, then parked the wheelbarrows.

Lightning up the bonfire unfortunately was not in the programme for tonight. As it was a windy day, we decided that a cosy pub would be a perfect place to rest and get warm after the session.

Next week we are back at Elthorne Park for an autumn burdock bashing!

Our monthly gig with the Ealing Mile seems to end with either a course record or close to it - crikey, some of these young people are speedy! But this is definitely an event for all, and all are welcome! Our volunteers were there to undertake the pre-race course safetly check, marshal, check off finishing numbers (a very important role, indeed) and act as the lead bike late sub (not needed off the bench in the end!). Oh, and we found time to grab a nice coffee (an important part of any community mission in my view!).

It was a lovely, sunny lunchtime at this month's Ealing Mile. It's part of the Ealing half Marathon legacy and offers another way for people of all ages and abilities to get outside and jog or run. Five high-viz heroes from GoodGym Ealing volunteered to make this race happen, a really important contribution. It's fab to be a part of our borough's thriving running community and know that we're making a difference.