The rain held off in Ealing for the whole day, just until 18:45 when the Tuesday night group run started. Refreshed by a mild drizzle, a group of runners led by Sevan looped around Walpole Park to meet Kash - a single person in the walking "group" - at the tool store. Harvey, Steph and Sevan came to help pick up the tools, which Kash thought was awesome. It's nice to have mates who have your back around when you're aware of strangers hiding in the nearby bushes while you're busy unlocking padlocks!

With an ample supply of chopping and shovelling tools in two wheelbarrows, the quartet marched to Lammas Enclosure to meet Chris and Bryon at the Transition Orchard. With the task owner, Trevor, unable to make it to the session that night, Sevan explained two jobs that needed to be done.

First task, cutting back brambles in the small forest area destined to become a hedgehog habitat, was tackled by Bryon, Harvey, Steph and Kash, after agreeing that not everything that had thorns could be classified as a bramble and obliterated.

Chris and Sevan focused on another job: snipping brambles and mulching around fruit trees. First, of course, they had to identify the fruit trees. Bryon did well in that matter, spotting a tiny apple under one of the trees. But there were also tiny oak trees growing under the presumed apple tree. How did they get there? Maybe the apple was a foundling, too?

Thanks to teamwork, two work lights and head torches for everyone, the six GoodGymers achieved good results despite the darkness. Our unstoppable team keeps going all year round, no matter the season. Next week, we will run to help Hanwell School of Boxing, a charity that supports young people of varying ethnic backgrounds in participation in sports. Sign up now!

On Sunday, 26th October, the clocks went back. According to the This Girl Can campaign, that night marks the time when almost three-quarters of women in the UK change how and when they get active outside out of fear about their safety.

To raise awareness about that gender activity gap and urge communities to change behaviours towards women that make them feel unsafe outside in the winter months, Let's Lift the Curfew movement, together with GoodGym and England Athletics, hosted over 320 events across the UK. One of them happened in Ealing!

We were looking forward to our group run, excited to see a fifty-fifty split between boys and girls in our sign-ups. Ultimately, we ended up with twice as many men as women, which might have been a stark illustration of the This Girl Can research, highlighting the barriers to getting active that women may experience outdoors after dark.

Undeterred by fewer than expected women showing up, we ran to Acton, 3 km each way, to find other ways to encourage women to stay active and healthy. We had 450 leaflets from Action West London, inviting Acton women to participate in free, inclusive fitness programmes: from strength and mobility classes for women aged 50+ to courses about strengthening the pelvic floor.

To distribute the leaflets promoting the events, we set off for a 3 km walk through Horn Lane and the streets East of it, occasionally astonished by hop-on hop-off buses cruising through nighttime Acton and slightly disappointed by the poor numbers of Halloween decorations. We managed to drop all the flyers through the letterboxes and are hoping that the initiative will help more local women discover opportunities to stay active, healthy, and connected.

Next week, we will slightly shift the theme of our group run and visit the Lammas Orchard a.k.a The Garden of Eden, where we will be clearing the spaces around mature fruit trees and more recently planted saplings, then mulching around them. Sign up now to join us!

St Mary’s Church of South Ealing is well-known to GoodGymers, whether through the weekly food cupboard sessions on Mondays, the gardening tasks in the churchyard, or the annual Christmas tree decoration. Tonight's task was a unique one. The local community was preparing for the first service to mark the start of the ministry of their new vicar, Revd. Joy French. Renowned for their Christmas tidy-up expertise, our team was asked to clean the gallery and tackle cobwebs in the church.

A team of runners and a cyclist arrived at the church to meet the member of the community, Brian, who handed them the tools: a few brushes, a dustpan, and two very long brushes - the cobweb busters. Freya and Kash, excited about getting the extra range, grabbed the super brushes and stayed on the ground floor to clean under the gallery. Iram, Chris, and Sevan, armed with brushes, wipes, and a dustpan, headed upstairs to handle the dust in the gallery.

While dusting, the upstairs team learned that their favourite church tower, an attraction to visit after each Christmas clean-up, was no longer accessible due to safety concerns. Meanwhile, the cobweb vanquishers downstairs discovered a bust of a biblical prophet with two left hands! We completed the job in just an hour and are hoping now that the community will be proud of their dust-free church while welcoming Reverend Joy.

Next week, we are staying in Ealing Broadway for the Tuesday evening session and tackling thistles and brambles in Walpole Park - sign up now to join us!.

If you want to visit St Mary’s during the day, sign up for one (or more) of the weekly sessions at the church’s food cupboard here.

The last group run of August 2025 took GoodGym runners Sevan, Harvey, Freya and Steph Ducat to South Acton in a pursuit of perfection in the art of leaf mulch making. At Berrymede School, they met Kash and Chris, and, of course, Romina from Cultivate London, who would guide them in preparing the finest 2024 leaf compost, continuing their work started in July.

Last year's leaves were well-marinated: dark, moist and rich - easy to tell apart from golden, crispy 2025 leaves that already started falling onto the schoolyard. We had to do our best to finish the 2024 batch before it got contaminated by this season's additions. Chris, Freya, Sevan and Kash positioned themselves at the leaves deposit to dig out the damp organic gold. The lowest layers already had some growth in them. The GoodGymers found peculiar white sprouts and even apples: one edible (presumably, as no one actually tried it), and another - an Apple device! Cultivate London charity could grow rich by growing more iPhones rather than selling leaf mulch to raise funds!

Harvey, in breaks from shovelling leaves, was driving the trolley with half-full tonne bags to Bay 2024, where Steph was performing leaf stomping: an ancient tradition of treading the mulch by feet to release the juices and initiate fermentation. As the time went on, the half-full bags in the bay, topped up with Harvey's deliveries and compressed by Steph, grew fatter and denser. Romina was delighted to see what outstanding results a small team could achieve and gave the GoodGymers a round of high-fives.

Next week, our Tuesday session will take place near Ealing Broadway. We will be pruning and watering at the much-loved Lammas Orchard. Sign up now to join us!

Jacquie, Chris, Aislinn and Steph Ducat signed up to volunteer until 3pm as requested by Angela, but as the BBQ was still in full swing and all were enjoying the sun, they all decided to carry on and finish by clearing, cleaning and packing up. All the customers were leaving and the crew worked relentless to ensure all was packed and left clean. They enjoyed some snow cones too. Super troopers!!!