As the title already hints at, this week it is the Great British Spring Clean... so a litter pick seems the logical choice of task for tonight.

Numbers kept changing, so in the end James & me were about to set off from base when the familiar smiling face of Cedric popped up to join in.

The council had been cutting back the vegetation at the station, so that seemed a good place to start, with better access to a lot of the beds there. From there we wandered along the edge of the slip road & A12 (safely on the pavement ofcourse) aiming to get to Redbridge roundabout.... but we came across so much rubbish along the way, it would take several daylight sessions and a few skips to clear up everything spotted down the embankment.

To our pleasant surprise the pathways through the roundabout were actually very tidy.

7 bags of rubbish are now awaiting collection by the council - job well done!

Perhaps a day early, but it felt just right to add a little Halloween to the Monday evening group session.... or was it just an excuse to dress up?

Sign-up numbers ran into double figures, perhaps down to the suggestion of a little social at the pub afterwards 😉

A few had to unfortunately pull out for various reasons, leaving 9 brave souls to venture out in the dark & misty world, searching for litter.

Linda took Helen & Sharon on a walk down the High Street, while Cedric took the running group to a quiet corner freshly mowed to clear some litter there before the group went round to the usual stretch along the A12.

A few bags and a jog round Leyton Flats later the crew reunited back at base, before strolling down the road to the local pub for a well earned drink.

P.S.... thanks to Elegia for the creative face painting!

For those who don't know Marian, she is the driving force behind the Wanstead Community Gardeners, a team of locals taking pride into caring for neglected pieces of land in the Wanstead area. Walking down Wanstead High Street, you cannot miss the different patches of land now showing a variety of lovely plants & flowers, decorating the landscape and cheering up the locals coming past.

Her latest protect has finally gotten the go-ahead, the car park at Snaresbrook station. A strip of neglected land along the edge of the car park has been handed over for a make-over. Today the focus was to clear rubbish, sift out rocks, spread soil & manure and in short get the stretch ready for planting.

As before, Marian put out the word that the project was on and the Goodgym crew was more than happy to get stuck in, delivering the usual level of energy and smiles, as well as welcoming the lovely Jenny on her first visit to this corner of London. Cedric popped in as well, having heard rumours about another project, as always a pleasure catching up.

Thanks to all joining in, we'll be keeping an eye on this to see how it develops and no doubt there will be more GG involvement!

Report/Feedback received by Marian:

"It was such a pleasure as always to have the Goodgymmers with us today. Very appropriate because they were there at the beginning of this project Nov 19th on a Monday evening, a group came along headtorches at the ready and took down a load of ivy from the wall. The bed we have adopted is long and narrow and was swamped by thick ivy growing wide from the wall. All that stuff was put in jumbo bags and they finished the job today by jumping up and down on it to compress it down so that the three bags could be put in the vehicle and away to the dump. Apart from that, more ivy roots dug up, rubbish taken out, another layer of leaf mould and top soil added, raked smooth and footed down. We've decided to have one more load of top soil added but that will be done from the garden centre vehicle so not a problem for us. Very soon, it will be time to plant this new border all 35 metres of it. (As usual, we've bitten off more than we can chew but usually manage to chew it.)

This is going to look so amazing. We're all so excited about it. We've already been given a wisteria and a rampaging climbing rose. Both needing new homes. Thank you from us to the GGs that helped us today. Your group really does make our projects possible. It's more than marvellous.

All good wishes, Marian. "

We had a new member turn up and help out and a returnee along with a someone who hasn't gone to these community missions for a long time. To all, glad you could make it. The good news is we had less than 40 food packages to do, and a lot of people which meant we did most of this within 2 hours. The rest of the time, we spent restocking and unfortunately finding products that have gone out of date, which annoyingly was a lot (100 bags of self raising flour, 125 tins of tomato soup, and some vegetable soup). We found a lot of custard creams went over their best before, which next session people are going to get a lot of biscuits (a future merry Christmas to them).

We started the session with a good old warm up and a jog - it was great to see so many goodgymmers getting out on Monday evening to do good and get fit!

Our run took us through greenman roundabout past whipps cross, all the way round to eagle pond to finish at Snarebrook Station where Marian from Wanstead Community Garden was ready to put everyone to work! We pulled off a lot of ivy, sowed down some dead mini-trees and cleared a lot of leaves! Great evening to catch-up whilst getting a workout through gardening for a good cause!

Afterwards, we raced it back to Wanstead House, making it overall 5.5km run - great job everyone!

Cool down and chat to finish the evening was just what the doctor ordered for a great start to the week!

A special shout out to Cedric for completing his 10th Good Deed!